Age of Empires IV is one of the flagship titles of the strategy genre, as it has been available for players for over a decade now and continues to be widely appreciated. Not least, its latest iteration has been well received by critics and by the public, who do not stop asking Relic Entertainment to develop a console version. Now, the developers of Age of Empires IV are “thinking about” a potential Xbox version of the title.
Age of Empires IV Xbox Version Coming Soon?
Currently only available on PC for the time being, Age of Empires IV strangely has not yet landed on the Microsoft Xbox consoles, despite being developed in collaboration with Xbox Game Studios. One possibility, it seems, could be there according to statements from a member of the development team.
In an interview, in fact, Adam Isgreen, creative director of World’s Edge (a studio within Microsoft that has dedicated itself to rename Age of Empires IV), allegedly stated that, once everything related to the launch of the game on PC has been successful, the team will try to turn their attention to the consoles.
According to Isgreen, they will try to explore the possibilities and ways to make the game work on other platforms, including Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One first. These were his precise words:
“As soon as we’re done managing the launch of the game on PC, we’ll start thinking about how to make it work on consoles,” says Isgreen in the same interview. “We don’t have any definitive plans yet, but it’s now that we’re going to really start thinking about it.”
The challenges of bringing a title born for PC to consoles are not minor. Relic Entertainment will have to devise any useful strategy not to make console players suffer from the lack of a keyboard or mouse, especially in relation to the multiplayer mode, in which speed is everything.
Previously, Age of Empires 2 was ported to PlayStation 2 at one time. Users then complained about inconvenient controls and graphics cut compared to the PC version. Almost the only successful RTS release on consoles can be considered Halo Wars in 2009. It was developed by the studio Ensemble, which created the Age of Empires.
