Age of Empires is aiming for Vortex mobile phones thanks to a Chinese studio
The Chinese company Tencent has announced that its internal studio TiMi – the authors of Call of Duty Mobile and Pokémon Unite – are working on a mobile version of the famous strategic series Age of Empires. The cooperation of the Chinese side with Microsoft and the World’s Edge studio, which is responsible for the Age of Empires series, is commented on his Twitter by Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad, who also reveals the name or subtitle of the emerging game – Return to Empire. There is a stylized trailer that provides a look at the various epochs of human history, among which you can see the realities typical of the series. Of course, there are also famous historical figures from the ranks of European and Asian monarchs. According to the video, the game should provide the opportunity to move across historical eras, manage settlements or entire cities and, of course, control the army in battles against enemies.
Tencent’s TiMi Studios Group has confirmed it is working with Xbox Game Studios and subsidiary World’s Edge to adapt the Age of Empires IP for smartphones.
The game is being developed by TiMi Studios under the title ‚Return to Empire‘ and is set to launch in China. pic.twitter.com/xGNjQZjeKE
— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) August 12, 2021
As Ahmad points out, Microsoft entered into a strategic partnership with Tencent in May this year, and the adaptation of Age of Empires for mobile devices will be its first result. According to the mentioned analyst, the game, which was supposed to be talked about at the beginning of this year, is currently being created exclusively for the Chinese market and has no release date. However, a playable demo should be available from tomorrow, which will develop the example described above. Ahmad further confirms that in Return to Empire, Western and Eastern nations will oppose each other and that the game will remain a real-time strategy. Not a word was said about monetization, but we expect that we are dealing with a free to play title, which will be further monetized through microtransactions affecting, for example, the speed of construction.
We don’t know anything more about the upcoming game, but we can remind you that this is definitely not the first time that the series will look at mobile devices. Already in 2005, the mobile spin-off of the second part was available, the third part was similarly processed, there must also be a mention of Age of Empires: World Domination, which ended in 2016 and, last but not least, Age of Empires: Castle Siege, operating until 2019.
