I think RTS games in the style of PC RTS don't end up working on consoles, because they tend to rely heavily on intense micromanagement for their strategy and depth that you just can't get with a controller. However, the genre can be modified for consoles - instead of just dumbing it down, if taken in a new direction it can be fun, deep, creative and very playable on a console.
Brutal Legend is a great example. Instead of being a straight-up RTS, it's a blend of strategy and action elements. The base-building is pretty much nonexistant - your stage, which serves as your base, is constructed automatically at the start of the battle - and resource gathering is limited to driving off a leech from a geyser with your troops and playing a solo to put a merchandise booth there, which gives you a constant supply of fans, your resource. You control your troops with a few basic commands, and can select individual units if you want, but the game avoids the usual frustration of trying to micromanage with a controller because you don't need to. Your army works best when it's all together, and your influence isn't in intricately controlling them, but in fighting alongside them.
Because instead of controlling the game from the sky, you actually play as what amounts to your army's 'hero unit'. You can fly around the battlefield, land at any time and fight your opponent or their troops with your axe and guitar, which can summon stage pyrotechnics to serve as ranged attacks - however if you die your opponent gets a free 50 fans.
You can also choose to play from a huge selection of solos, which each have a different (and usually awesome) effect - like attaching an anvil to your opponent to stop them flying away, or melting the faces of any nearby enemy infantry, or turning your nearby troops invisible, or crashing a flaming blimp onto the battlefield. These take time to recharge so knowing when to use which solo is an important part of the strategy of the game.
And as well as that, you can team up with any of your troops to do an attack more powerful than either of you could do alone. This ranges from simply controlling a more powerful version of their usual attack, to doing something totally different, such as the double team for the Fire Barons, bikers who throw molotov cocktails, which lets you lay down a trail of flaming booze, doing tons of damage if you manage to trap enemies in a ring of fire.
So while Brutal Legend can seem simple or dumbed down if you base it purely on how well it emulates PC RTS games, it does actually have a hell of a lot of depth in its own way, and takes the genre in a direction where it does work well on a console. If more RTS games are to be successful on consoles, I think this is the approach they need to take - not "how can we make the control scheme of a controller work for a PC RTS?" but "how can we modify the genre so that it plays to a console's strengths?"
