Age of Empires IV was formally announced by Microsoft at Gamescom 2017, with Relic Entertainment (Company of Heroes, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III) as the lead developer.
Since that reveal we haven't heard a lot about it and E3 2019 was no different. However, after Microsoft's annual briefing event, Executive VP of Gaming Phil Spencer said to PC Gamer the game is making good progress thanks to Relic and more information should be revealed later this year.
We'll talk about it more this year. Relic's great as a studio, we're making good progress with it. One of the things I loved about our show [on Sunday] is the things that we didn't show. We had 60 games, 14 first-party games, with 12 shipping in the next year. And then I know, like okay, what's The Initiative working on? Where is Age 4, how's that going? I think Playground has a second team, what's going on with that? Where's Turn 10, they didn't show up?
So it was cool for us to be able to have a such a full show, and have some things like Age 4 that have been announced and haven't been shown in a while, other things that maybe aren't announced, to still be able to have those for us to continue to drive excitement, both through the year and potentially even next year's E3. But we'll talk more about Age of Empires IV, yeah.
I want us to make sure we're doing that in the right context. The thing I would say is we've been incredibly impressed by Relic's capability. Obviously they're somewhat local to us being in Vancouver, and we know the studio. They did the best job of, 'here's what we think Age should go to'. And the other thing I'll say is, we are learning a lot revisiting Age 1, and Age 2. Those communities continue to exist, and they have large player bases, and there's a lot of feedback. So we're really getting good insight—even here as we're putting Age 2: Definitive Edition, which is playable on the floor, from those communities about things they'd like to see in Age 4, and that's important for us.
Given that the game was originally announced at Gamescom 2017, Gamescom 2019 seems like a fitting venue to showcase more of this project. As a reminder, the convention will take place between August 21st and 24th at the usual Koelnmesse in Cologne, Germany.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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