It's not like Michael de Plater of Total War: Rome (et cetera) fame gave us a signed declaration about his World War III console RTS EndWar being published for PC on April 1st, 2009. But when we asked about a PC version of the unusual (see below) strategy game, he told us a little story about how publishers like BioWare (Mass Effect) announce nextgen versions of certain games, only, but how, after a couple of months of peak sales of that title, they "surprisingly" announce the PC version. This has just happened for Mass Effect, by the way, where a "We never officially announced a PC version" in our interview with Ray Muzyka in October 2007 has already turned into a May 2008 release date for exactly that conversion. There are also rumors that a playable PC version of EndWar has existed for some time now. While the exact release date (sorry, we meant to write "the announcement if there's going to be a PC version at all") of course is at Ubisoft's sole discretion, we would not be surprised if you'd be able to buy the PC game in Fall 2009. At the latest. The game will be out for Xbox 360 and PS3 around October 2008.

EndWar is unusual and very interesting (in our opinion) for a couple of reasons. First, you'll be able to command your troops using your voice. Second, there will only be 7 unit types (compared to hundreds in the Total War series or dozens in other RTS games), but they will be highly configurable. Third, the online campaign will actually take about 15 real-time days to be finished, the state of the war (between the US and Europe, by the way) being calculated every day from how many of all online battles went for a given side. So it's possible you'll fight a losing war -- but why should you not drop out and join the winning side? "Because you can only have one army online, which you improve over time", de Plater explains.

He also strongly hinted on EndWar getting successor titles (or addons): "After all, it's about the Third World War, and in the first title, only the United States and Europe are included". Plater also likened the dynamic campaign mode (where you can lose badly defended territories to the computer or human opponent) not so much to that of Total War, but to a sports tournament. He continued: "When one side is starting to lose -- on the campaign or on the single-battle level -- it will get certain bonusses like weapons of mass destruction, to make the endgame phase more challenging and fun".