E3 2013: World of Tanks is blasting its way to the 360
Good news, tank fans! World of Tanks is heading to the Xbox 360 soon. Wargaming.net's partnership with Microsoft has been a huge milestone for both companies, as there hasn't been a large library of F2P games to grace the console's life. Although it's particularly late in the game's life to see World of Tanks hit the console market, transition to a controller-based system has actually been a good thing for the game.
At this year's E3, Massively talked with Wargaming's Jeremy Monroe a bit about the company's growth, World of Tanks on the 360, and future plans for game releases.
"We're bringing in 60 million registered players from around the globe, and they're bringing a huge Xbox community of gold subscribers," says Monroe. "We know that the console gaming community is perfect for World of Tanks." What's awesome about World of Tanks on the 360 is that it's not a port. The game has been developed ground-up for the console, so a lot has been optimized for the graphical processing, userbase (achievements unlocked!), and general feel. Wargaming's huge flagship achievement has always been bringing an level of authenticity to its titles, and that same attention to detail is carried over to the console version.
Unfortunately, there won't be quite as many tanks in the 360 version as the PC. There have been some improvements to the user interface to account for the play distance from a computer to a console. PC games typically don't have an in-game voice client, either, but voice chat will definitely be enabled for the newer rendition. Players without Xbox Live will have a seven-day trial to test out the game before they're required to purchase a subscription, so there's no "roping in" consumers if they're not happy with the title.
When it comes to games that operate close to a first-personshooter control style, I'm a die-hard keyboard-and-mouse user, so I was a little skeptical about how the controls would operate within a different gaming environment. In the past, control styles have always favored keyboard-and-mouse users specifically because of the freedom of control with the mouse. "Actually, it's the other way around," remarked Monroe. "The control is very natural for this style of game."
Unfortunately, the title isn't planned currently for XBone. "We all have our eyes on what other potential is out there, but right now we're going to focus here and get all the kinks worked out." Monroe explained. The game has seen wild success as a free-to-play game, but it's definitely aged some, so releasing on next-gen hardware would definitely widen its potential playerbase, even if it might not sway current PC players to switch sides.
After our meeting, Wargaming treated me to an incredible video of the pre-alpha version for World of Warships. While still early in development, this title already appears to have a ton to offer. The explosions for every ship nearly deafened me as a 10-minute warship battle raged across the ceiling of a domed theater. Once again, the company plans to bring extreme detail to this title, so much so that it felt it couldn't even include submarines in the game due to their realistic but unwelcome slow speed.
Finally, if you haven't been keeping track of Wargaming's airborne title, World of Warplanes, here's the scoop: It's hitting open beta on July 2nd.
Massively's on the ground in Los Angeles during the week of June 10-13, bringing you all the best news from E3 2013. We're covering everything from WildStar and Elder Scrolls Online and ArcheAge to FFXIV's inbound revamp and TERA's latest update, so stay tuned!
