210°

Cloud Powered Record Breaking MMO Age of Ascent Ported Easily on XB1 via UWP, Will Have CrossPlay

Age of Ascent, a record-breaking MMO that registered over 50K players in a single battle thanks to Microsoft's cloud, will be available on Xbox One too with crossplay functionality.

Read Full Story >>
wccftech.com
Garethvk3322d ago

Let us hope Cross Play really takes off.

ccgr3322d ago

Agreed, being able to play with PC users is great

Alexious3322d ago

The Cloud usage of this game is particularly interesting. Hopefully more MMO games will do the same.

odderz3322d ago

This sounds really promising for the XB1 library, but I hope it doesn't just become a weaker PC.

3322d ago
MCTJim3322d ago (Edited 3322d ago )

Love to give this game a try with cross play

"Did you have to tone down the graphics or scale of the game on Xbox One at all? Can you tell us the target resolution and frame rate?"
No, we haven’t had to change the graphics or scale in any way. Most of the hard-stuff-concurrency-scale of AoA is handed off to the cloud anyway; so the actual device that renders the game world matters fairly little. "

"As the AoA code broadly exists in a “write-once” environment, we really don’t have any particular platform preference."

That there is fantastic...UWP seem to be real big with this

DethWish3322d ago (Edited 3322d ago )

It is a browser game (as he said, it plays in Chrome/Safari/Firefox/whatever ), so the UWP stuff is probably just a wrapper to get in on Xbox. Since he says most of the work is done in the cloud, whatever is on the client is probably something like a movie player (or more like the remote-play apps for xbox/ps4 on pc).

Seafort3321d ago (Edited 3321d ago )

Like DethWish above has said. It's a browser based MMO type game for multiple platforms like Chromebook, Chrome, Firefox or Edge.

This is the minimum specs on the AoA website.

"Minimum Specs For The Game

We have written the game to run even on low-end hardware. It’s been tested on a $200 Chromebook and it works just fine at a decent fps. To play Age of Ascent, there’s nothing to install or download; it runs natively in the browser without plugins. All you need is a modern, up-to-date, WebGL-capable browser such as Edge, Chrome or Firefox."

Personally I've never heard of the game so as a PC gamer it doesn't interest me in the slightest. This feels like Microsoft trying to convert any old game to UWP to make their point that it's possible but they never once asked if this is what anyone wanted as usual.

I have better space games to play on PC like Stellaris and Space Pirates and Zombies 2 for instance :)

3322d ago
ninsigma3322d ago

Interested to know if it was already running through UWP on Windows before being ported or if it's really easy to move from .exe to uwp.

Seafort3321d ago

It's browser based so there is no UWP or exe on PC. It's all done through a WebGL-capable browser like Chrome or Edge and powered by Microsoft cloud servers, Azure.

ninsigma3321d ago (Edited 3321d ago )

Ah fair enough. So I guess they're using it as an example of how it's easy to port to uwp.

Show all comments (16)
50°

Josh Sawyer: "I feel good about the ability for people to create games."

Game Pressure met with the one and only Josh Sawyer at Digital Dragons and chatted about RPGs, Pentiment, Pillars of Eternity, the state of the industry, and the genre.

Read Full Story >>
gamepressure.com
70°

Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2 devs praise games like Space Marine 2 for "lowering the barrier"

Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2 developers discuss the huge success of Space Marine 2 and its effect on the series as a whole.

Read Full Story >>
videogamer.com
Jingsing4d ago

How about an official level editor for Boltgun?

jznrpg2d ago

I’ll get Space Marine 2 when it’s cheaper. I don’t pay more than half price for short games.

60°

Glen Schofield: Dead Space Wouldn’t Be Greenlit Today—Publishers Are Afraid to Take Risks

Sector sat down with Glen Schofield—creator of Dead Space and The Callisto Protocol—during the Game Developers Session (GDS) in Prague to discuss the evolution of the game industry, the current challenges of AAA development, and why it's become so hard to get original ideas off the ground in today’s risk-averse environment.

1nsomniac5d ago

It’s easy enough to say that, but why? It feels weird to me when developers say this but common sense would tell you everything about the idea itself should work.

The idea of the concept seems like a winner at whichever angle you look at it so why would publishers not greenlight it?

… it’s almost as if the majority of publishers are massively incompetent at their jobs. But there’s no surprise to anyone there.