The only remaining market for RTS are so called 'casuals' that want single player experience. So what happens is - people check out the new game, and either get bored (it's too similar and worse) or get discouraged (it's too different to bother learning). So new games in the same genre have to compete against a game that was made by Blizzard in 2010 and constantly developed ever since. With multiplayer games people can play the same title forever if it's deep enough. In my opinion Starcraft 2 killed RTSes (just like Dota 2 and LOL killed MOBAs). This means there's an increasing amount of talent available in the wider gaming community for organizing tournaments and commentating. * The game randomizer community keeps building new community-run tournaments and fan commentated races.

Indie RTS costs will go down as people experiment with that. It's very high-production pixel art, but more importantly it's only one unit facing. * Tooth And Tail managed to look great while using pixel art. * People /are/ trying to make indie RTS games, more than I've ever seen before. I'm pretty sure that crowd is all in Roblox or modded Minecraft these days. * Even back in the heyday of RTS, everyone I knew played custom maps rather than the actual RTS. * Streamers rely on their ability to self-commentate, but nobody can play an RTS while talking. It's not like platformers where the world has accepted we can get away with pixel art forever.

There hasn't been a breakout indie RTS, and nobody has established a default cheap art style for these. * RTS games are still pretty expensive to make well. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, and you may disagree with whether large studios should act this way, but that doesn't matter, because the observable fact is they do. * There hasn't been a huge RTS hit in ages, so large studios aren't going to push large chunks of cash into them. Some problems I'd note for any resurgence of the RTS genre:

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