The World of Tanks will be growing again in 2015. Wargaming announced Wednesday that its free-to-play game will add the Xbox One as another platform for players to battle in large-scale tank skirmishes in 2015. Even better, they’ll share the battlefield with Xbox 360 players.
World of Tanks just recently celebrated its one-year anniversary on the Xbox 360. The free-to-play game saw more than five million downloads in that time, according to Wargaming, which is enough to qualify as a success.
It was only a matter of time before World of Tanks made its way to the Xbox One with those numbers. However, Wargaming CEO Victor Kislyi told A List Daily in 2013 that the console would need to have a “user base in the millions” for the publisher to move the game over. That condition has been met with the Xbox One reaching over 10 million consoles sold over the 2014 holidays .
Wargaming doesn’t want to lose its existing base of Xbox 360 players though, since a large user base is critical to the success of any free-to-play model. That’s why World of Tanks will support cross-platform play between the Xbox One and Xbox 360.
World of Tanks player progress such as vehicles, experience, credits, gold, and items are all tied to the Xbox LIVE accounts. This will allow tankers to not only compete across the two consoles, but also move freely between the two as well, as long as they use the same account.
We’ve already seen player progress carry back and forth between both Xbox consoles for games like Destiny and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare . However, this is the first title to support cross-platform play for Xbox consoles.
The Xbox One edition of World of Tanks will receive some graphical upgrades. To what extent is unknown beyond the brief gameplay glimpses that are shown in the announcement trailer at the top of this article and the screenshots. The ground textures and foliage appear to be enhanced along with improved details on the tanks themselves. We should get more details in the coming weeks, but one thing players will be keeping an eye out on is if there is any competitive advantage to be had by playing on the Xbox One over the Xbox 360.
This is just the latest in a steady stream of free-to-play games coming to the Xbox One. The Xbox 360 didn’t start getting these games until the end of its lifespan with titles like Happy Wars and World of Tanks . While both of those titles are making their way to the Xbox One, there have been some failures such as Crytek’s Warface and Ascend: Hand of Kul .
In addition to World of Tanks and Happy Wars , the Xbox One has Neverwinter , APB: Reoloaded , and other free-to-play titles coming to the console.
[Images via World of Tanks ]