The survival MMO Ark Survival Evolved is set to appear in Game Preview soon on Xbox One. The creator is optimistic, especially regarding performance.
Ark Survival Evolved is the summer hit on Steam. The dino MMO made headlines in the wake of Jurassic World. It came almost out of nowhere and impressed players with a survival concept, dinos, and communicative developers.
However: The performance was catastrophic, especially at the beginning of Early Access. Even powerful PCs struggled to run the Unreal Engine 4 game smoothly. How will such a resource-heavy game work on the Xbox One console?
In an interview, Jesse Rapczak now spoke about the port of Ark Survival Evolved to Xbox One. Microsoft approached them, saying “You’re doing well in Early Access on PC, why not join our Game Preview program for Xbox One?” And they wanted to.
The director of Ark, Jesse Rapczak, is optimistic that they will surprise the players. They were able to optimize the game for Xbox One. It looks great, runs wonderfully and smoothly – servers will handle a maximum of 70 players.
In Early Access on PC, they earned a reputation for not having the best optimization, Rapczak admits. In the beginning, they added so much to Ark that performance suffered. Now, with the port to Xbox, they took their time to optimize the game. They said, “We have a great game, let’s make sure it runs really well.”
If people want dinos, they have to come to us
In the interview, there were still some anecdotes. They observed with some concern a survey: What theme should the next Far Cry game have? In the survey, dinosaurs shot to the top. When Ubisoft then announced Far Cry Primal, the Ark creators breathed a sigh of relief: no dinosaurs. Now they look forward to Far Cry Primal and will enjoy the game.
And if people want dinos, they still have to come to Ark.
Ark is set to be playable in Game Preview on Xbox One starting Wednesday, December 16th. The official release, also for PC and PlayStation 4, is scheduled for June 2016.
Thanks to our reader Niklas Diemann for the tip!