Age of Empires is finally arriving on mobile after a long wait. Microsoft on Tuesday during a livestream for the 25th anniversary of the fabled game announced that Age of Empires will soon be making its way to the devices all of us probably use the most.
The game has so far remained a sort-of PC-exclusive, that is, if its Chinese version – Return to Empire – is not counted. There were a couple of other releases too but they saw very limited success. But unlike Return to Empire, which also has Tencent’s TiMi Studios contributing to the game’s development, it appears from the livestream that AoE Mobile is being developed only by Xbox Game Studios and World’s Edge Studio. Whether that will lead to any major differences between the two games is something that remains to be seen though.
The 20-second long teaser doesn’t reveal any information about the game, only showing off its backdrop, that too without the use of any actual gameplay footage. This obviously means we are all in the dark when it comes to the release date. But considering the usual mobile game development cycle, we should hopefully be seeing early betas next year, at the very least. Expect the game to land on both iOS and Android when that happens.
Microsoft’s been trying to make its presence felt on the mobile side of things lately, with the tech giant currently looking at the acquisition of Activision Blizzard King, which is expected to complete in 2023.
For those unaware, Age of Empires is a series of historical real-time strategy video games whose first game was released way back in 1997. Being a menu-intensive game, fitting it into the tiny space of a mobile phone can be a bit challenging. But seeing as it’s already been done before with the TiMi version, it shouldn’t be hard to pull off at all.
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