With Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition (AofE2) out on the market and Age of Empires 4 (AofE4) on the horizon drawing ever closer, the question of a possible console port is being asked. The RTS series has been in demand for a console port from players for a very long time. At XO19 and during an interview with Twinfinite, Creative Director Adam Isgreen commented, “So, the plan is that I want to make the best PC real-time strategy game possible first. Now there’s mouse and keyboard support on Xbox, but so many people don’t have mouse and keyboard that they can plug in.” He continued with,
So, I think the challenge, and what I want to fool around with afterwards, is… once we get this done, we’re gonna look at what we can do for console controls, like building a console control scheme specifically for Age of Empires. We don’t have anything to announce about console right now, but we’re going to go try to figure it out.
While Xbox One supports a keyboard and mouse plug in, the team behind AofE2 wanted to build a control scheme designed for the controller instead of having an additional keyboard and mouse be mandatory. many console players do feel more comfortable with the controller as well. Other RTS games are on console already such as Stellaris, Halo Wars 2, and They are billions all of which have been well received. It is also notable that the original AofE2 saw a release on PlayStation 2 back in 1999. Hopefully the team can figure out the control setup for a controller and drop a console version soon.
AofE2 is not the only game seeing a possible shot on console. Microsoft’s Shannon Lofte commented during a interview with Stevivor, about a console release of AofE4,
It’s hard, as a PC game. We want to make it great on PC. But then, I think the whole concept of platform is about to change with Xbox. We are working hard to make sure to visualize all the different ways that people are going to want to experience Age. But our number one priority is to make it work great with keyboard and mouse.
While the priority lies in perfecting the keyboard and mouse control scheme as well as performance on PC, a console launch isn’t a dream but an idea under consideration. With the Xbox Scarlett coming out next holiday season, and mostly likely around that time for AofE4, hardware should not be much of a problem as well Age of Empires as a series was never too demanding on machinery.
Having Age of Empires on console will be a nice addition, and one that fans have been asking about for awhile now.