In the six years that it's been releasing videogames, Gas Powered Games has made five different products with five different publishers. Now that's what I call an independent developer!

They just announced their sixth title with a sixth publisher. Square Enix will publish the sequel to Supreme Commander, Gas Powered's super fiddly real time strategy game with a thousand robots in lieu of any personality (pictured above). This is a particularly weird fit for Square Enix, known for its Japanese RPGs. And while I'm glad to see Gas Powered taking another stab at the game, which had a lot of substance despite its lack of flash, I'm a bit disappointed that it wasn't picked up by a publisher better known for real time strategy games. The genre is changing dramatically. It's not a good time for an ambitious but brittle developer like Gas Powered to team up with a publisher like Square Enix that has no experience with the genre (real time strategy games) or the platform (PCs, I presume, considering the disastrous attempt to port Supreme Commander to console systems).