Despite watching the business side of video gaming for years, I am still occasionally taken aback by some of the things I see. The most surprising thing I saw this year occurred the week of Sept. 20th. After a summer that was virtually devoid of quality PC releases, three companies decided to release highly-anticipated Real-Time Strategy (RTS) titles on virtually the same day.

I don't know how long Kohan had its release date published, but Dawn of War was announced a little later than what I typically see. For its part, Activision didn't announce Rome until two weeks before it came out - unusually late!

Now I don't know what the motivations of the companies were here, but I do have to wonder if they couldn't have spaced them out a bit better? Perhaps Activision, flying high with its great financials this year, thought they could bury the other two titles with their huge marketing and advertising campaign? If so, I would consider that a very disappointing development in an industry I have always thought to be the most competitor-friendly around.

Perhaps Activision was frightened that if they released after Dawn of War or Kohan, gamers would be too busy enjoying the other titles to pick up Rome? I hope that is not the case, because I don't think it holds water based on past purchasing trends. Give gamers just a few weeks between titles and they are likely to buy a second game in the same genre; release all of them on the same day and one will win out, while the others will probably only be picked up from the bargain bin later on.

So with the publishers seemingly playing some contest, I decided I would review whichever game was the first to land on my desk. The winner turned out to be Rome: Total War . And I am glad it was - the game was wonderful and really deserved the "Must Have" award we gave it.

But that also means that now, closer to Christmas (the object of the September - December release rush, right?) I get to play a little catch-up and tell you about Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War...