According to a job listing posted this week, a new Age of Empires game is in development at World's Edge. This, by itself, is no big surprise, since Microsoft's historic real-time strategy franchise has enjoyed a quiet renaissance in the last few years. Between 2018 and 2024, all previous installments have received their own Definitive Editions and/or remasters, of which Age of Mythology: Retold is just the latest. Most of them, especially Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition, are still getting new DLC, too.
However, unless they're going for a full-fledged remake of an existing game that was already remastered, chances are this is going to be a brand new game. The biggest surprise from that job listing, though, is that it reveals that the title will be powered by Unreal Engine 5 technology.
At Xbox Game Studios, we are hard at work continuing the great legacy of Age of Empires, our beloved RTS (Real Time Strategy) franchise. We are a passionate group responsible for this amazing franchise and are expanding our team looking for a wonderful colleague that will be responsible for planning and building our future tech stack. We are looking for a Principal Unreal Engineer with background in all aspects of Unreal Engine game development and experience leading external resources.
Internet sleuths have also discovered the LinkedIn page of World's Edge Principal Build Lead Engineer, which tells us that the team has been developing a triple-A pipeline support for 'unannounced titles using Unreal Engine 5', plural. This particular developer has been with World's Edge since December 2023.
The first candidate is, of course, Age of Empires V. The fourth mainline installment did well enough, receiving several awards for the best strategy game released in 2021. Its fourth expansion, Dynasties of the East, will release on November 4 (the same date as the game's debut on PlayStation 5), adding Golden Horde, Macedonian Dynasty, Sengoku Daimyo, and Tughlaq Dynasty as well as a roguelite single player mode.
Age of Empires IV was developed by Relic Entertainment. As far as we know, World's Edge is not big enough to make a new installment on its own, so it'll be interesting to see if they partner with Relic once again. As a reminder, the Vancouver-based studio became independent from SEGA in March 2024.
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