‘Age of Empires: Definitive Edition’ Updates: Release Pushed Back To 2018 As Devs Invite Further Beta Tests

Long-time fans of Age of Empires will have to extend their seemingly age-long wait for Age of Empires: Definitive Edition, as the release date for the remaster has been delayed a week before its initial intended release.

Forgotten Realms, developers of the remaster of the said legendary real-time strategy (RTS) game, has announced on October 13 in their official game website that Age of Empires: Definitive Edition will not be arriving on the target release date of October 19. Instead, the RTS game will now be slated for an early 2018 release, though the developers were not specific about the exact date.

The development team disclosed that they have had numerous creative and developmental debates regarding the extent of the restoration that they need to do in Age of Empires: Definitive Edition, whether the game will stick close to its roots back when the original game was released in 1997, or be something notably different remains to be seen.

Forgotten Realms has also expressed the difficulty they incurred in reworking a classic RTS like Age of Empires since they believe that a franchise of this caliber needed to be handled with a certain amount of appreciation. This was made even more difficult with the current culture of gaming where they had to re-adjust the old RTS to fit in with the players’ expectations.

With that in mind, the team wanted to create something that is not necessarily replicative of the actual experience of Age of Empires, but rather something that the franchise was remembered for.

To achieve this, the development team deemed that more closed beta engagement from the fans or potential players is necessary, as the closed beta will allow them to gauge not only the player preference but also to iron-out the single player and multiplayer aspects of the game. The development team will be providing active communication with all player feedbacks in order to keep the players satisfied with the remaster.

Player base reception has been more or less tame despite the significant delay of the Definitive Edition, with some beta testers even alleging that the closed beta simply needed more time to fix the game’s network stability and general performance issues. Fans and patrons of the Age of Empires franchise may sign-up for the closed beta using the developers’ Age of Empires Insider Program. Doing so, however, will require an Xbox Live account from Microsoft.

[Featured Image by Age of Empires]