That's why most "strategy games" today are RTS games and not TBS games, because the "instant gratification generation" doesn't want slow, boring, turn based game-play that requires real thought about where you'll move you're next unit or what kind of attack they'll use. They want to point, click, and win...period.
That describes Starcraft to an amazing degree, which is why it saddens me so much when it gets paraded as an example of a 'deep' and 'complex', 'classic' game merely by virtue of selling a lot of copies.
Still, if you want to see an exception to that rule of real-time games I'll recommend today's daily offer: Men of War, second hardest game I've ever played in my life, surpassed only by Paradox' Achtung Panzer. So much time playing it and I've only beaten two missions, one of which I'm pretty sure was intended as the 'tutorial' and the other required stupid amounts of sheer luck, as evidenced by my posterior attempts at replicating my former victory.
In my eyes if any game dev out there today wanted to show real innovation, they'd take a large leap backwards and make a game that looked new but played like a old school game. Sadly, I just don't see it happening and I doubt any of the major studios will think that a old school play style could still be a "Hit Game" in today's market.
That's exactly what's been happening in the mainstream RTS arena, and it blows. Starcraft II is Starcraft in prettied-up clothing, which in turn was little but a space mod on Warcraft II, a barely-altered sequel to the first Warcraft, which was a 'me too' to the original Command & Conquer, itself a copycat of the genre's originator, Dune II. I mean, freakin' Windows has changed more in the intervening years than the RTS genre's core titles, and given Microsoft's glacial development pace that's no small feat.
No, what we need are devs unapologetic about making games that require you to learn real-world skills to have a chance at it. One of my proudest moment in gaming was when I played Rome: Total War right after reading a biography of Napoleon, tried a tactic in-game similar to one described in the book, and it worked. Of course, the Total War games aren't that hard to begin with (mostly due to poor AI), but it was a nice moment. Had I tried it on a mainstream RTS however, I would've been crushed quickly and decisively by my opponent's fast clicking and his soldiers' unwavering determination in the face of overwhelming odds.
