A partnership between Wargaming, Sega, and Creative Assembly has been announced, in which the three companies will support Creative Assembly’s upcoming game Total War: Arena. Announced at the Game Developers Conference in 2013, Total War: Arena is a free-to-play strategy game with a mix of RTS and MOBA elements.
The press release explains that the partnership will take place under Wargaming’s new publishing label, Wargaming Alliance, which will be a third party publisher with the goal of helping developers get into the free-to-play space. “Wargaming Alliance is dedicated to providing third-party publishers and developers the tools, resources and platform to enter the highly competitive free-to-play gaming market along with access to Wargaming’s substantial subscriber base of over 100 million gamers.”
Wargaming is the developer of the massively popular free-to-play game World of Wartanks, as well as World of Warships, so using their new publishing label to leverage the audience of those games could prove to be a great benefit for smaller developers, as well as larger companies such as Sega.
President and COO of Sega Europe, Jurgen Post, says “This strategic partnership with Wargaming, to release Total War: ARENA as the first game on the Wargaming Alliance platform, presents a unique opportunity for Creative Assembly’s eagerly anticipated creation to realize its full potential. Working with Wargaming, a market leader in the free-to-play space, and by utilizing their extensive experience and expertise in this area, SEGA is confident that Total War: ARENA will become the worldwide hit it deserves to be.”
The last time we were given a look at Total War: Arena’s gameplay was over a year ago in an alpha gameplay trailer. The game currently has no release date.