I have to agree with the comment on lack of innovation and AoE4 (which looks great to me) is a perfect example. The TLDR is that "it's not so easy to re-skin a successful game". But it's the nature of the beast, and let me explain myself:

AoE4 is up on the list of the Steam top-sellers with already over 10000, very positive reviews. Before making the game, you knew that there is a certain hundreds of thousands of copies sold that you can count on, just for the fact that your game is called "Age of Empires 4". Now what you need to do, mostly, is not "screwing it up" by deviating too much from whatever it is that made AoE2 successful in the first place.

Now as I say this, it could be that even the small deviation from AoE2 to AoE4 is too much.
I can see the initial peak of AoE4 players almost halving this week (it's now getting closer to half the all-time peak) and potentially those players going back to AoE2. And the player count of AoE2 eventually surpassing AoE4, as they already did with AoE3. So, as unoriginal as this game looks, it's possible that Microsoft will not succeed in convincing the player base to switch to the newer AoE4 either, as they couldn't with Age of Mythology, as they couldn't with AoE3.

Relic themselves, again I think they have done a great job, but we know they have innovated more than this in the past, and if you read AoE4 reviews you will that as well in comments such as "where is feature X that is in Relic's game Y?". One possible answer is that the game is made to specification, it's not the time to reinvent the wheel, it's time to give people what they want. Like if you made yet another Marvel movie.

What's important in this news, is that this is the only AAA RTS game that has come out in the last 11 years (roughly) and that it became playable on Linux already in a matter of weeks. AND it's a MICROSOFT GAME, FFS!

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Liam now this is too much RTS and Linux that I have no choice but to become a GamingOnLinux supporter.
I was trying to be a miser about it and not be a supporter but you keep bringing good news about RTS games, first Age of Darkness, now this. I can't take this anymore.
Now I'm not sure if Microsoft deserve my money but certainly you do.

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I have very serious doubts on this one. I have been looking into this game because it seems right my alley.
The playthrough videos aren't looking very good, and there's not many people reviewing which play on Proton (for which I am grateful for this review). But it's hard to decide on a purchase when it's early access plus playing the "Proton lottery" wondering "would it work on my system too".

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