ARK: Survival Evolved, a multiplayer sandbox game about life amongst dinosaurs, has already become even more popular on Xbox One than it is on PC. Developer Studio Wildcard brought ARK to the Xbox One via Microsoft’s Game Preview Program on December 16 more than six months after first releasing the early access game on PC. Speaking about the Xbox One release, here’s what Studio Wildcard co-founder Jesse Rapczak had to say:
“In under a week ARK was downloaded over 1,000,000 times and Survivors had lasted a combined 200,000 real-life days against the dinosaurs and perils of the island, including other players! There’s no question that survival games have taken the PC world by storm lately, and as the only true large-scale multiplayer survival game available on console, perhaps it comes as no surprise that ARK’s daily Xbox One player count is already bigger than on PC.”
Keep in mind that ARK has merely been downloaded, not sold, one million times on the Xbox One, as the Game Preview Program allows users a one hour trial before purchase. Nonetheless, the news that the daily player count on Xbox One has surpassed that of the PC version in a mere two weeks is pretty incredible. It seems Studio Wildcard originally hadn’t predicted just how popular ARK would become on console, and has been hastily putting up more and more servers as the player base grows.
Considering ARK’s $35 price point on Xbox One, the most we’ve seen for a preview game, and the scarcity of other games like it on the platform, I wouldn’t be surprised if the majority of Studio Wildcard’s profits begin to come from Xbox rather than from Steam. If so, I imagine we will see far more major updates and fixes on the console version in preparation for the official launch in June of 2016.
You can pick up ARK: Survival Evolved on Steam for $29.99 here (although at the time of writing it is on sale for $17.99) or from the Xbox One store for $34.99 here. The price is expected to increase come official launch.
Source: Inquisitr
Tristan was a regular ICXM contributor between 2015–2017, publishing 51 articles across opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news. Their work focused on hands-on reviews, platform commentary, and breaking-news reporting during the Xbox One X launch year and Microsoft’s wider Play Anywhere / UWP gaming initiative. They post on X as @tbogost.