World’s Edge have revealed Age of Mythology Retold is coming this year.
Founded in 2019, World’s Edge is the main studio dedicated to the Age of Empires franchise. However, most of their games have been made in partnership with other studios, mainly Tantalus Media and Forgotten Entertainment. Age of Mythology Retold is also a partnership with Forgotten Entertainment.
In a new sneak preview trailer, World’s Edge showed off their new models for three units; Medusa, Pegasus, and the Titan Cerberus. World’s Edge explained that Age of Mythology Retold goes beyond having a game engine upgrade, and the now normative QOL improvements. They are changing everything up on the art assets front. That means new 3D models, textures, UI, VFX, and more.
At the end of the trailer, they revealed that Age of Mythology Retold will be released in 2024, on Xbox and PC via Steam. The game will also be Day One on Game Pass.
The Xbox announcement makes it clear what Microsoft wants to do with the franchise. Age of Mythology Retold is being produced for the express purpose of making the title playable on game consoles via gamepad controllers. World’s Edge did this exact same thing for Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition and Age of Empires IV.
In this case, Xbox is following up on a trend they have been helping foster, of bringing PC real time strategy games to consoles. It’s an interesting development, as there was once a time when gamers themselves were skeptical that real time strategy could work on console. This was why we only ever got StarCraft 64, and Blizzard never thought to reexplore the possibilities for them strategy titles.
Of course, we had seen various dalliances for the genre to enter the console space through the years. Microsoft did it years before with their Halo Wars games. Nintendo, surprisingly enough, got into it with the oddball, and now very successful, Pikmin franchise. And then there are the evolutionary dead ends, like Lord Of The Rings: The Battle For Middle Earth 2, one of the best titles on the Xbox 360.
Today there is a wider variety of these games on console, now that the industry has pretty much figured out how to make it work. Between Company of Heroes 3, Crusader Kings 3: Console Edition, down to Evil Genius 2: World Domination and Bad North, real time strategy comes at different scales and prices, for console players to play more or less of as they like.
So it’s no longer a question of will anyone play these games, but, how can we make more gamers RTS players? And that’s something Microsoft would like to solve for the industry.
You can watch the sneak peek and announcement video below.
