Around 5:45 Julian says that free-form strategy games cannot guarantee that the player will always have something interesting to do, and that, in his view at least, you couldn't get away with that sort of game anymore today.

Paradox Interactive with their Hearts of Iron, Europa Universalis and Victoria franchises are still up and running. Hearts of Iron 3, in particular, seems more popular than ever, after the release of the third add-on, "Their Finest Hour". And if anything, HOI3 is even more of a sandbox than the original XCOM.

Similarly, Bohemia Interactive's Arma series as a comparable counterpart in the field of first person shooters is gaining massive popularity as well, even though it incorporates extensive "downtimes" for players.

You can't churn out annual iterations and expect AAA-rate numbers of sold copies, but the community is still large enough to warrent a couple of these franchises.

Finally someone else said it "RTS games are fighting against the interface, turn based are pure game" I have nothing against RTS but that has always the problem: hand-eye coordination is almost more important than tactical decisions.

Its' like: you click your unit to move and the interface interprets it wrong; you lose vs you think that this place is the best, it wasn't you lose. How many times in RTS games a part of your HUD is blocking the view or clicking the wrong unit because it moved under your mouse while you were defining actions, you battle with the map to find a unit that is constantly moving etc etc.. I know that's part of the game type but for my money, they all have had so huge flaws in some part that none (since turn of the millenia) has made me do what i did with Civilization series.

I think' i'll go and get my copy of the new XCOM...