Ubisoft has big plans for EndWar's World War III

Ubisoft has told GamesIndustry.biz that it believes it can exploit the World War III scenario established in Tom Clancy's EndWar for a variety of projects.

"As you can see from looking at World War II [games], World War III is something that can be big enough to be explored from loads of different directions, loads of different theatres and genres - we really see this as the beginning of that," said creative director Michael de Plater.

The console strategy game, detailed but not shown at Ubisoft's Paris event this week, has been designed to appeal to fans of tactical shoot-'em-ups as much as strategy gamers - with a control system that's comparable to the Ubisoft Ghost Recon games.

The emphasis will be on tactical strategy in battle rather than traditional PC real-time strategy elements like resource-harvesting and base-building, the company said.

By way of illustration, during its conference on Tuesday evening, Ubisoft told the audience to "imagine the apocalypse as a techno-thriller".

It's the publisher's first entry into the burgeoning console RTS field, which is currently short on titles but still dominated by Electronic Arts, whose Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth and Command & Conquer series are both represented in critically

acclaimed instalments.