Though DayZ creator Dean Hall will be leaving the project and developer Bohemia Interactive in the coming months, he’s still very much on board as of now when it comes to development. Speaking to Eurogamer, Hall mentioned that DayZ could come to Microsoft and Sony consoles by year end with Steam Machines also being considered.
“Whether that means it’s being actively developed or released… I’d be surprised if any console port could be developed in 12 months; we haven’t fully started developing anything yet for a console.
With regards to Microsoft, Hall said he saw some “really interesting” things. “There were definitely some things they said that I’m not allowed to talk about that I was like, ‘Wow! That’s interesting. Why don’t you tell people that?’ But I guess they want to make sure everything all goes together and that.
As of now, Hall is still unsure whether console versions will be under his purview. “I care a lot about the PC, obviously, and I have nothing against consoles, and there’s some really interesting and exciting things happening. That was one of the cool things about meeting with Microsoft,” he said. “It’s a bit early for me to say whether I’m super-interested in consoles. I would imagine that, at the very least, there would be control and user-interface changes for the consoles.
“People rip on Microsoft and Sony but actually, when meeting with them, they’re definitely legitimately interested in DayZ.”
As for the current alpha status, Hall said that, “The roadmap [for the beta] is end of the year, but we don’t want to release the beta on, like, December 12 or whatever. The beta date would either be prior to the end of the year, so November or something, or it would be pushed to January or February with more QA.” It’s likely a full version will be out by either Spring/Summer 2015. Stay tuned for more details as the year progresses.