Triumph Studios, the Dutch team behind the Age of Wonders and Overlord series, is due to go sci-fi for the first time with Age of Wonders: Planetfall (out on August 6th for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One). The game will be the first to be released by the developers after they got acquired by Paradox Interactive in 2017.
In a recent interview with GamesBeat, Triumph Studios Managing Director and Co-Founder Lennart Sas also discussed the ongoing digital PC store war between Epic Games Store and Steam. Sas mentioned that it was only a matter of time after Valve enjoyed a position of unchallenged dominance for a very long period.
It was bound to happen. Steam was in a very luxurious position for a very long time. You expect that people would try to take a jab at it. But I think the larger thing that’s going to happen in the coming future is the streaming portals you’ll see. Lots of big investments in that arena. That’s going to be the big change. This is only the opening shots to that massive change in digital distribution.
In case you’re afraid Age of Wonders: Planetfall might be an Epic Games Store exclusive, rest assured that won’t be the case as confirmed by the Triumph boss.
It’s going to be on multiple stores, yeah. I don’t know exactly ones, but Steam is one of them.
Sas later commented on the rise of Netflix-like subscription options (Xbox Game Pass, EA/Origin Access), too.
I’m no longer the boss, but it’s interesting. A lot of these things have changed and made things better for smaller studios like us. If you look at the types of games that allow people to play for a very long time, to spend a lot of hours and be highly engaged in content, with multiplayer functions, I think that it doesn’t matter much how you distribute it. If I were making games that were smaller single-player experiences, that are one-offs, then I’d be more worried.
Do you think he’s right about a Steam challenger being overdue? Let us know in the comments.
