It’s kind of adorable looking back on this report from yours truly from nearly a decade ago, talking about the news that Microsoft was considering bringing some of their major gaming IPs to mobile starting with the Age of Empires series, and that the mobile iteration “might" be free to play. Fast-forward to today where 99.999% of all mobile games are free to play and, yeah, it sounds a bit silly. Oh how innocent we all were back then. Anyway, Age of Empires did in fact come to mobile, in two different forms, and neither were really equipped to satisfy the core fans of the series. There was Age of Empires: Castle Siege, which started life as a Windows Phone game (remember Windows Phone?) before subsequently making its way to iOS and Android devices; and Age of Empires: World Domination which never seemed to find its way out of soft-launch.
Both games were more like “RTS meets Clash of Clans stuff" rather than the complex and expansive historical real-time strategy titles of the mainline series, both titles were extremely free to play, and both titles are no longer in operation. So several years removed from those previous mobile efforts, Microsoft, or technically Xbox Game Studios I guess, along with its internal studio World’s Edge, have announced a brand new mobile Age of Empires game cleverly titled: Age of Empires Mobile! Here is a cinematic teaser that shows no actual gameplay but is lovely all the same.
So yes, not much known about this one just yet, but I’m sure there are plenty of questions from Age of Empires fans. Will this be a full-blown real-time strategy game, or an RTS-adjacent thing like a PvP base builder or tower defense game? Will this be free to play? I mean, probably, right? Will this game require you to be online, and if so, will it also shut down within a few years like the previous Age of Empires mobile games? Let’s hope not. There’s also the possibility that this could be the global release of Return to Empire, which has been out for more than a year in Asian markets and was a collaboration between Xbox Game Studios, World’s Edge, and Call of Duty: Mobile developer Timi Studios. Anything is possible at this point.
Whatever the case with this new mobile game, Age of Empires should still be pretty happy since there was tons of cool stuff announced today during the 25th anniversary celebration of the series, but it sure would be extra cool to get a really solid mobile take on this classic franchise. Once more details are revealed about Age of Empires Mobile we’ll be sure to let you know.
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