PAX East has ended but not before Studio Wildcard was able to tell the world about some of the big updates coming to ARK: Survival Evolved over the next couple of months. The news revealed sales numbers, additional maps and mod support, and the promise of the game heading to new consoles.
ARK is still in Early Access on Steam and was released earlier this year on the Xbox One as a part of the Game Preview program. Since that release it has had 4 million sales on the PC and 1 million sales for the Xbox One. Jesse Rapczak made a statement explaining how much this success on the Early Access platform has done for the continued development of the game and how with added features the full release of the game will have to be delayed to Holiday 2016.
Ark's success has increased our content goals and Early Access players have helped us raise our ambitions with their invaluable feedback. When we first announced, we said 70 dinos, now we'll have over 100. We never anticipated adding modding, local multiplayer, split screen, or numerous other upcoming features. The game at launch will be far more robust than originally conceived, but it takes a little extra time to wrap it all up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpf0j_NVO3Y
The second large announcement was on the integration of mods from the community into the official game not only on PC but also on the Xbox One. This isn't going to work in the same fashion as Fallout 4 allowing users to put any mods on their system. Instead modders will be able to submit their own mods for consideration, if accepted then the mods could be integrated into later versions of the game. Two of these mods will be added to ARK in May, a new map called The Center and the Primitive+ mod. The Center is a map designed by Ben Burkart, a member of the ARK community, that is a fantasy take on the world of ark with new biomes, dungeons, floating islands and more. Primitive Plus takes away some of the resources of the players and limits you to taking on the world with only wood and stone. Primitive Plus will be available as a mod on all official ARK maps.
The final big announcement was that the newly announced ARK: Survival of the Fittest, which is already available on PC, will be coming to PlayStation 4 as an early access title on the 19th of July. PlayStation 4 will also be getting ARK Survival Evolved in the future. Survival of the Fittest will be coming to Xbox One too, but at this time no release window has been indicated. Studio Wildcard explained that they only have been adding one platform at a time as a way of maximizing development.
What do you think of all the ARK news? Which of these are you most looking forward to? Let us know in the comments below.
