This just in: 11-year EA veteran Neil Young left his position in the company. Details were kept pretty vague, but the word is that he's out for a "new project." Why did he leave and who's going to take his place? Details after the jump.

Could we blame skeptics from saying that "console RTS" won't work? Real-time strategy (RTS) and its close cousin, real-time tactics (RTT), have always been the domain of the personal computer, with its mouse and keyboard. The traditional console controller is ill-suited for the rigors of battle strategy. And with some disappointing attempts to port PC RTS titles to consoles - including the early Command & Conquer titles to PSOne and StarCraft on the N64 - somehow the cry went up from both sides of the gaming world: stick to the status quo.

This is where Electronic Arts, stubborn EA, comes in. Criticized as they are for a number of gaffes in the past year (alone), we'd always held that sometimes, even they can get some things right, or at least good enough. Backing EALA's bold attempts to put RTS into console gaming (starting with The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-Earth II) might be one of them. And now a bolt from the blue dev, Tiki Games, plans to craft a real-time strategy title for, among others, the handheld PSP.

A crazy effort - ludicrous, even? Or is it finally time some boundaries are breached, some lines blurred? Is the core idea of real-time strategy breaking free (because there's not a star in heaven that they can't reach)? Short of beating the 360 Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars out of EALA right now for a review, we try instead to deconstruct the idea behind strategy games, and see where they fit in the matrix of the gaming console.

Short version of the verdict: it can, and it will - if you're willing to be as wily as Sun Tzu on a coffee high, that is.

Sun Tzu says: Hence it is only the enlightened ruler and the wise general who will use the highest intelligence of the army for purposes of spying and thereby they achieve great results. Intelligence analysis of strategy gaming on consoles after the jump, Commander.