During yesterday evening, Microsoft has formalized what has been the open secret for some time, namely the arrival of the Age of Empires series on the Xbox. The announcement came during the celebrations for 25 years of the series and will include the arrival of two chapters of the series over the next year.
Let's start, of course, from the titles in the pipeline on the Microsoft home consoles. There will be two games in the series to arrive: Age of Empires 2 and Age of Empires 4. The second chapter will arrive on January 31, 2023, while the fourth will also be launched in 2023, but the release date has not yet been announced. Both games will arrive on Xbox One, Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X. Their arrival will obviously be included in the Game Pass, just as Cloud Gaming will also be supported, like any console game.
As was easily imaginable, both games will also support mouse and keyboard but will also be fully compatible with the Xbox pad. In addition, cross play will also be supported, thus allowing console players to be able to start games together with PC users. Clearly all versions of the titles will be supported, both the Steam ones and those of the Xbox client present on PC.
We heard your pleas, and we agree that now is the perfect time — we're aging up and heading to the console age!
Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition and Age of Empires IV are coming to Xbox consoles and xCloud in 2023. Check out the trailer and mark your calendar! #AoE25 pic.twitter.com/YXpTKHCDaf
— AgeOfEmpires (@AgeOfEmpires) October 25, 2022
Based on the answer, this is probably only the beginning of a path that will bring more purely PC games closer to Microsoft's home consoles. We have already seen an example in the past, with the launch of Microsoft Flight Simulator: the flight simulator was in fact born exclusively for computers, but after a short time it also found a home on Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S. An additional confirmation of the fact that the Redmond house does not intend to put barriers between the players, even if obviously porting of this kind requires time and substantial investments.
