Square Enix, who're no publishing Supreme Commander 2, have given us a solid release date for the highly anticipated RTS today, revealing Aussie store-shelves would be packed full of SC2 boxes on March 4 for PC, and March 18 for Xbox 360.

"The partnership with Square Enix has been a highlight of my career," said Chris Taylor, Founder and Creative Director of Gas Powered Games. "I couldn't be more proud of what the team has accomplished, as the game has continually exceeded all of my expectations throughout its development."

We have a stack of new screens showing off the game's intense combat and stunning visuals you can see right here (and a few below).

http://www.ausgamers.com/gameres/4825/images/230/SCFrame_Thu_Jan_14_165841_2010_00056.jpg http://www.ausgamers.com/gameres/4825/images/230/SCFrame_Fri_Jan_15_164233_2010_00024.jpg http://www.ausgamers.com/gameres/4825/images/230/SCFrame_Thu_Jan_14_163946_2010_00053.jpg

Is that date right? Cos Steam reckons they'll have it on March 3, unless 'unlock' means something over than able to buy & play..

yeh looks like march 3 for pc and march 18 for xbox

BTW no idea how u play RTS game on a console

With great difficulty.

Steam is March 3, retail March 4

RTS on a console...lol. Anyways, looks brilliant, as per usual. Can't wait to get me some serious RTS

I await the oncoming release with some anticipation, but with somewhat more trepidation.

They are making a lot of changes, some of which go against mechanics which are present in both SC and TA, primarily in the economy and upgrade systems.

Additionally I wasn't particularly impressed with their after launch support for the original... there were patches and fixes but it seemed shortlived proportinally for a relatively popular RTS and was somewhat lacking overall - especially when it came to balancing and fixes for lots of annoying bugs and balance problems many of which are still broken even now, even after the FA expansion (which of course brought still unfixed bugs of it's own.)

I've also heard they are abandoning gpgnet for steam, which is understandable considering the now fairly mature and widespread platform which it offers.

I will probably still buy it, but whether it ends up a dusty unused .iso image on my file server like Demigod quickly became is all too uncertain still.

I just rang EB games in brisbane and they are taking deposits for a march 5 release.

the game's intense combat and stunning [pre-rendered] visuals

fixed because serious those aren't in game and even if they were you won't be playing the game with views like those.

I wonder if there are stats available on # of games purchased @ retail vs online. I personally haven't bought a game (well, non wii) at retail for a good 3 years; the price differential and the fact that I usually get the urge to play a new game at silly hours (like 1am or something) make online just too convenient to go past.

SF do you have any info here? Or a gut feel at least?

I'd be curious too - I'm in the opposite camp. I still prefer to buy physical boxed copies, because I hate sucking down and blowing gigs of data from my quota when a store can provide me with a 2xDVD copy.

On that note, what are the system requirements for this?

last edited by Raven at 10:16:05 06/Feb/10

i bought this game yesterday [the 4th] and tryd installing it and it says 'cannot install supreme commander 2 because it has not been released yet" wtf?! and i tryd it again this morning [the 5th] and it still doesnt work!

I just happened to be in EB looking for some kind of game to play - I was looking at games like Napoleon and Rome, and by chance saw SC2, completely not realised it had been released.

So I shopped around a bit (screw paying EBs price) and still managed to come out spending more than I would have getting it off Steam, go figure.

First massive bitch - I bought a boxed copy. WHY THE FSCK do I need a Steam account then!?
Yeah, that pissed me off.

They've dumbed it down and simplified it something shocking. Games seem to be designed to take no longer than about an hour or so - or maybe it's just that the AI is even worse than in SC/SCFA.
Experimentals are no longer as indestructable as they used to be - in fact, they're really not much more than a high-tech unit. They don't take long to build either - but on the other hand there's much more of an emphasis on rushing this time around.

Units, there's bugger all. And the new tech tree system makes it confusing as hell to know what you're building. THe UI does't really tell you what info you actually want to know - I've found it really difficult to understand.

There's still no complex battle tactics - and everything happens way too quickly to actually organise your troops. For example, say I wanted to form a convex Phalynx that has weak units in the middle, allowing those units to be destroyed while the heavies flank the enemy and become a concave phalynx...
Yeah, good luck with that. In fact, good luck even forming a standard Phalynx. Movement is so dumbed down that 'attack' seems to have been resorted a bubble attack, and unit micro-management is so pointless because most attack waves get dismissed in around 15 seconds.

Those who use the strategy of towering, you'll be happy with this game - it seems to be practically the overwhelming strategy that works on the AI, especially against low-tech units.

Lastly on how it performs, I've been running it at 1920x1200 on a 9600GT and I've had absolutely no problems, it runs super fast - no AA though. I'm about to try it at 1920x1200+1280x1024, but I'm not expecting any problems.

Anyway, that's my brief comments to far.

damn was thinking of getting it this afternoon ^^ that sux!@