14 DAY TRIAL // Bohemia Interactive aims to bring DayZ to the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 sometime in the future, but for the time being the transition is problematic, due to the fact that the survival shooter video game is in Early Access.
DayZ was one of the gamed which hit it big on Steam when the standalone alpha was released on Early Access, selling over 1 million copies in its first month after launch, in spite of repeated warnings from the developer, instructing people not to buy the game.
Initially starting out as an Arma 2 mod, DayZ became a full-fledged standalone project when Arma developer Bohemia Interactive took it under its wing, and it's currently showing steady signs of growth.
The sandbox experience and the wealth of interaction that players can experience make the actual running away from zombies a secondary concern, with the game's main focus being general scumbaggery aimed at other players.
Since the game features permadeath, everything and anything is allowed, and the Internet is full of people singing for their lives or stripping down and dancing, while other players keep them in the crosshairs of their assault rifles.
Psycho simulator with zombies, coming to PS4 and Xbox One soon
In any case, the game is currently in development, and it appears that Bohemia plans to drop it on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 too. If the PS4 version was announced at Gamescom, creator Dean Hall waited until EGX to deliver the news regarding Microsoft's latest home console.
"DayZ is definitely going to be a multi-platform title - that's the firm vision from Bohemia's standpoint. But we'll announce what all the other platforms are as we get to that point," Hall stated at EGX in London.
He did not reveal any more details regarding either console, but talked about the difficult nature of implementing Early Access on consoles, which could mean that the company was planning to release the game before the development process was complete.
Beyond Early Access
"There's a lot of problems with Early Access on PC that definitely are at the forefront of people's minds. So when DayZ will release would depend very much on what Sony offers in terms of if it was going to do an Early Access program, what it looks like. Then also the state of DayZ - does it make sense to do it through that?," Hall explained to Eurogamer.
For the time being, no decision has been made, and the question of when the game will become available on consoles also depends on when the work on DayZ's graphical engine is done. Bohemia Interactive is completely replacing the engine for the console ports, and the next information regarding time frames will be unveiled sometime in early 2015.
"The during next year thing would depend very much on what do the consoles offer in terms of release strategies. A straight up retail release? It's not going to be next year, because there's just too much work remaining. It would be a very bizarre universe where there would be a 1.0 release of DayZ on consoles before PC," Hall concluded.
