The game, which will be free, is being developed by TiMi Studio Group, owned by Tencent, who worked on Call of Duty Mobile with Activision, along with Xbox-owned studio World’s Edge.
Age of Empires: Mobile is now available for pre-registration on iOS and Android worldwide. The release date is still unknown (although the iOS page says it is expected on August 19), but it is expected to be launched by the end of 2024.
The announcement states that Age of Empires: Mobile will reproduce much of the gameplay that fans are familiar with, such as: fast combat, real-time strategy, base building, and online PvP multiplayer, but with optimized controls for mobile devices.
What we know about the highly anticipated AoE for mobile
Players will be able to form teams with a series of famous leaders from history and throughout the Age of Empires franchise, such as Julius Caesar, King Arthur, Hannibal, Joan of Arc, Cleopatra, and more. The developers promise that players will be able to face off against lots of people online, just like in the regular versions (although they will also be able to play solo).
“We grew up playing Age of Empires on PC and we believe we can offer an equally exciting experience to mobile players,” said Brayden Fan, CEO of TiMi, in a press release.
This is not the first time that Microsoft has tried to launch a mobile version of the game. In June 2013, Microsoft tried its luck in mobile game development and one of its first projects was Age of Empires. The intellectual property was licensed to KLabGames, which would develop a free-to-play version for iOS and Android. This became Age of Empires: World Domination, which closed in less than a year.
Microsoft had also tried a couple of times to make a free-to-play version of Age of Empires. First was Age of Empires Online, a real-time strategy MMO launched in 2011. It was free to download, but had premium content that was not fairly priced.
There was also Age of Empires: Castle Siege from 2014, which was a tower defense game developed specifically for touch screens on Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone, although it later arrived on Android and iOS. It was also free-to-play with microtransactions. That one lasted a little longer than the others, but it was still shut down in 2019.
