At the Penny Arcade Expo festival, Firaxis Games announced that it is working hard to transfer its last year’s hit XCOM: Enemy Unknown to the Apple mobile platform.
Last Thursday, when Firaxis announced the development of the Haunted Hollow casual strategy for iOS, criticism of the American company was also heard in the general buzz of approval on the Runet. They say, why do they reinvent the wheel, take up a new brand, when it will be enough for them to make XCOM “for mobile phones” for success.
Apparently, the critics were heard. Last Saturday, Firaxis not only announced, but also showed how XCOM works on the iPad. And, most importantly, the developers have demonstrated that they do not create a game from scratch, but make an honest port from the consoles of the current generation. Fortunately, Unreal Engine, on which the original project was assembled, allows this.
In fact, this is such a local revolution: Firaxis was the first to port AAA games of the current generation of consoles to a mobile platform. The performance of the project, however, at this stage is far from ideal, judging by the video. But the developers have time to fix it: the game will be released in the summer as a paid application.
Given the recent announcement of Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft by Blizzard, it is clear that, following the publishers, large development studios that previously created hardcore games are starting to look at the mobile market. Does this mean that we are waiting for a wave of AAA titles?
Industrial blogger Sergey Galenkin thinks not: “These are experiments, I think we will see some more big games for mobile devices at E3 or Gamescom. And if they take off, 2014 will be a fun year with a new generation of consoles and a strong mobile market.”