More than a gadget

A couple of years ago, Apple launched a new device which looked like an oversized iPhone. This new tablet computer proved very successful, more than 50 millions iPads being sold in the first two years. Other manufacturers started producing tablet PCs, using Google's Android operating system. Also, the incoming Microsoft's Windows 8 OS has been designed to run of both PC computers as well as on tablet devices. The conclusion is obvious, this kind of device will be the future of consumer computing.

The iPad owns a lot of its success to the multitude of applications that were developed to run on it. A great deal of those application are games. But many of those games are the ones designed for smartphones, where the general use case is to play for short periods of time. The iPad, however, seems to be suitable for other kind of games, as well. This is mainly due to its big screen size compared to a smartphone.

A lot of people are passionate about strategy games, but there are few titles available that cover this genre on iPad. I am not aware of any that focuses on the same gameplay and WWII setting as the Panzer General series and I think many strategy gamers would like to play such a game on their tablets.

If one thinks about it, turn based strategy games are quite a good fit to be played on a tablet device. There's no need for real-time 3D flashy graphics and the touch interface can easily provide the required level of control. The game can be played for a while, suspended and then later the player can continue from where he left off.

Multiplayer is also a viable option, in some derivative form of the old play by e-mail (PBEM) system. Such an option would be an online server which could provide both a game lobby to find opponents and storage for the between-turn saved games.

So, it seems that the stage is set. It's time for The Panzer Division to show up.