After much speculation, Amazon Games has announced that its MMORPG New World will be relaunching as New World Aeternum and coming to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. While the new version of the game will bring with it new quests, improved combat, and more endgame material, many PC players aren’t happy, continuing to review bomb the title on Steam.
Those playing on Steam are frustrated, having waited for more content on PC only to have the devs seemingly change gears to exclusively focus on the upcoming console versions. In an interview with PCGamesN, the New World team explains what they’re hoping to achieve going forward.
“To me, Aeternum is the ultimate New World experience,” senior producer Katy Kaszynski said. “If you played in 2021 when we launched and you haven’t played since then, when you come back, it’s going to be a completely different experience – it’s not going to be the game that you remember. If you’ve been playing, this is now a continuation of your journey.”
Creative Director David Verfaillie also gave his two cents. “What I like about Aeternum is how we’ve made the onboarding and the initial experience great for new players. It’s not just the narrative. We’ve streamlined the quest experience. It’s also filling in gaps that players have been telling us about for a long time, like Group Finder – we launched without that, and now it’s so easy to get into a group. It fills in all the gaps we’ve had and now it’s a full, ultimate experience.”
Following its launch, New World hit a peak of almost 1 million concurrent players and became the most popular game on Steam. One month after its release, the game sat at around 300,000 concurrent users. Last month, New World only saw 9,783 players at its peak.
New World was released on PC in September 2021 after a delay. The game takes place in the mid-seventeenth century and tasks players with colonizing a supernatural continent to their liking.
