“Anything Shadowrun can do, we can do better” seems to be how SEGA are feeling right now, as they have revealed they will be the first third-party to feature cross-platform play in their game Universe at War: Earth Assault. But will a RTS really benefit from such an idea?

From SEGA:

“Incorporating innovative multiplayer modes inspired by popular massively multiplayer online games and competitive online titles, Universe at War: Earth Assault for the PC and Xbox 360 will give players achievement points, rewards, and medals to encourage players to progress in the game. Players from around the world will battle in the persistent-style ‘Conquer the World’ mode across the PC and Xbox 360 for ultimate faction supremacy in a virtual representation of Earth.”

Developer Petroglyph are reportedly hard at work to get the balancing issue right, but is it all worthless? The big debate on why RTS games are better on the PC is because the mouse can be used so much quicker than a controller ever could. The precision with a mouse is always going to trump the slow speeds of a pad, and tweaking the game to get a good balance could alienate PC gamers.

It will be interesting to see where SEGA go with this, because RTS games are notoriously difficult to convert well to a console, let alone allow 360 and PC gamers to at it head to head. This could get very interesting.

Thanks to Diogo for submitting.