Before the initial launch of the Xbox One version of ARK: Survival Evolved developers Studio Wildcard spoke about features that they would want to put into the console edition of the game. One of these features was the inclusion of split-screen play so that couch co-op would be possible. It is now known that this will be put into the next patch of the game.
Revealed today via a blog post the upcoming v731.0 will have the split-screen multiplayer not only for local play but also for online play. This is so far the only change that has been listed for this new update with "more notes to come". Since the games release onto the Xbox One's Game Preview program it has been getting plenty of updates and while still quite rough around the edges is showing excellent progress.
In the current version of ARK on Xbox One, version 730.0, there were plenty of additions made that show the effort being put into the game. These aren't just small changes either, the current version of ARK already has all the functionality of the PC version up to v231.9. Due to the pure numbers of people playing the game they also had to add another 100+ servers where 70 people can roam at a time. Other additions to v730 include better framerate, fixed memory leak, increased server difficulty, and plenty others.
ARK: Survival Evolved is currently available as part of the Xbox One Games Preview program and on Steam Early Access as well. It's also good to remember that the game being in the Preview/Early Access means that they aren't complete games and you are still likely to encounter a wide variety of bugs and other issues attempting to play it. Bugs aside though it's a wildly popular game on Xbox One and saw over 1 million downloads in less than a week and it is still really hard to find servers with enough space for you and your friends.
What do you think of ARK: Survival Evolved getting a split-screen functionality on Xbox One? Do you own the game for Xbox One or for PC? What is your favorite part of ARK so far?