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CitiesXL to close multiplayer features
Three months after launch, CitiesXL was forced to make a difficult decision. An email was sent out to all players this morning informing them that as of March 8th, Monte Cristo will be putting an end to the Planet Offer: "Three months after the launch we have to admit that the subscription rate is lower than what we expected and therefore the Planet Offer is not sustainable. Not enough players decided to subscribe." The CitiesXL team has our sympathy -- it's never easy to make such a decision -- but there is a silver lining. While players can no longer visit other cities, trade tokens, and so on, CitiesXL will continue to exist as a single player game. Monte Cristo has also added an FAQ to their official site, and the complete letter to subscribers can be found below, just after the jump. Presumably, this will be the last time you'll hear about CitiesXL on Massively, so we wish them the best of luck on the single-player version.
Cities XL feature set and subscription pricing for European release announced
Paris-based game developer Monte Cristo Multimedia is only a few months away from releasing Cities XL which will potentially bring something fresh to the MMO scene: persistent world city-building. We've reported that some of Europe's French and German-speaking countries will get their hands on Cities XL first as of September 3rd. Monte Cristo has dropped more details today about the online play they'll deliver with Cities XL with their online/persistent world "Planet Offer". We suspect the feature set will remain much the same when the title releases for North America, however subscription pricing has only been announced for Europe:
Cities XL dev blog explains integration of gameplay with social networking
Cities XL is a game in development at Monte Cristo Multimedia that's ... well, it's a little hard to explain, as it's quite different from the titles we typically cover at Massively. Essentially, Cities XL is an MMO variant of popular 'builder' games where players can create urban landscapes with all that entails, plus businesses and industries, even determining the makeup of city populations (age, education, wealth). The cities designed and established by players can become part of a global, interconnected system, giving rise to all sorts of interactions in this persistent world. (It should be noted that Cities XL can be played in single-player mode as well.)There's a Cities XL dev blog at IGN that's taken a look at some of the features that will be in place with the Planet Offer (fully interactive), namely how a user's profile page will integrate social networking into Cities XL play. The blog entry states: "You will be informed in real time of everything that is happening around your game."
