Age of Empires II Definitive Edition & Age of Empires IV coming to Xbox


Microsoft announced during a 25th-anniversary celebration of Age of Empires that the latest game, Age of Empires IV, is coming to consoles next year. It will launch on day one on Xbox Game Pass, and it will be playable via Xbox Cloud Gaming for those who prefer to play on portable devices. The game launched in late 2021 for PC, and it has been available since then for PC Game Pass subscribers, but this is a great opportunity for console gamers to check it out.

In case you missed out on the PC release or you’ve just been waiting patiently for news on this port, my colleague Mitchell Clark has some fun coverage from last year on the impressive lengths that Microsoft and World’s Edge (the studio focused on Age of Empires) went to give deeper historical context to the game’s battles. It recorded documentary footage of reenactments that you’ll be able to watch with each mission.

It’s kind of a big deal when real-time strategy (RTS) games come to consoles because they aren’t a natural fit and there are numerous challenges to gracefully make the jump from PC to console. They need work on their interfaces, performance, and control schemes to give console gamers all of the same commands they’d get on a keyboard.

Gamers have been asking for Age of Empires to come to console for years, so it’s great that it’s finally happening (and that it won’t come at an extra cost for Game Pass subscribers). And, if you need another RTS to chew on before that launches, Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition is coming to consoles first on January 31st, 2023.
 
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Reactions: menace-uk-
Good news!

Also, Anno 1800 is getting a console release, it's probably one of the best RTS series around.
 
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Reactions: Kvally
So I'm guessing it's now cool to say yay to DE's, remasters and remakes 😆

On a serious note, this is cool.
 
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Reactions: bullzeye
I did the pre install last night. Will try out when I have time. Afraid I’m going to be overwhelmed it has been so long playing something like this.
 
I did the pre install last night. Will try out when I have time. Afraid I’m going to be overwhelmed it has been so long playing something like this.
The basics will be simple enough. It has a tutorial campaign to help get you started.
 
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Reactions: lowdru2k
Playedd for an hour, me likey!! Works pretty good on controller, for small scale skirmishes anyway.

I did the little intro tutorial, will take some getting used to, but everything seems to work pretty well. The graphics are pretty nice for what it is, definitely a major improvement over the origin AOEII back in the day! Very nostalgic playing it again, I look forward to getting through the tutorial and playing as some of my favorite empires from back in the day.
 
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Reactions: menace-uk-
Really having fun with this, surprised how many campaigns there are I only remember a few from age of kings and the conquerors expansions.

For some reason the default graphics settings is at high instead of ultra, I tried playing with tons of troops on screen and didn't see any slowdown.
 
Had time to dive into this this morning. Before I knew it hours had flew by. Just as great and addicting as I remember in my PC gaming days. Only problem is if I keep playing this now my wife and kids would leave me lol. This game is a massive time sink.
 
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Reactions: menace-uk-
Age of Empires 4 for Xbox now available.

Edit: announced at Gamescom ONL. URL still isn't live yet that I can find.
 
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