Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, Keeper, Grounded 2, and the ROG Xbox Ally (which will allegedly receive a release date) make up day one, as previously announced. However, you can also look forward to Cronos: The New Dawn, Hotel Barcelona, Invincible VS, World of Warcraft: Midnight, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, Dying Light: The Beast, Starsand Island, PowerWash Simulator 2, Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade, Outbound, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle: The Order of Giants.

Day 2 is also just as packed. Previously confirmed titles include The Outer Worlds 2, Ninja Gaiden 4, and Overwatch 2, but Onimusha: Way of the Sword, Jurassic World Evolution 3, FragPunk, Mistfall Hunter, At Fate’s End and Age of Empires 4 are also present. Final Fantasy Tactics – The Ivalice Chronicles, My Hero Academia: All’s Justice, Silent Hill f, LEGO Voyagers, and High on Life 2 will also appear. If that wasn’t enough, you can expect to see Silent Hill f and Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater in action.

Before all this unfolds, Gamescom Opening Night Live will take place on August 19th at 11 AM PDT and promises its own stacked lineup. Then there’s Future Games Show on August 20th, featuring Phantom Blade Zero and Little Nightmares 3. Stay tuned for live coverage throughout all this.

The new campaign focuses on the historic battles between the European Crusaders and the Muslim resistance in the area. Players will be able to follow the stories of well-known Muslim leaders throughout their battles against the Crusaders.

Alongside the host of new content coming to the game, The Sultans Ascend will also bring with it four new variant civilizations that can be played. These variant civilizations will re-imagine civilizations that were originally introduced with the main release of Age of Empires 4. There will also be ten new maps, and new unlockable rewards.

Age of Empires 4 was recently released on Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S, complete with a new control scheme that revolves around making use of the Xbox controller to command units. Age of Empires 4 is available on Xbox as well as PC.

At Gamescom Opening Night Live, Microsoft announced with a new trailer that Age of Empires 4: Anniversary Edition has now launched for Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One, and is, of course, also available via Xbox Game Pass.

The real-time strategy title’s console port comes with a handful of key changes and additions, including 4K support, a new user interface, new automatic tools to speed up gameplay, quality-of-life improvements, improved tutorials for a better onboarding experience, and more.

The improved onboarding, meanwhile, comes in the form of The Rise of a King, a new narrative-driven experience that takes place over a 20-year period leading up to the Battle of Hastings, which is where the main campaign kicks off.

Where multiplayer is concerned, players can compete, cooperate, or spectate with up to 7 friends in PvP and PvE multiplayer modes on Xbox Series X/S, and up to 3 friends on Xbox One.

Both titles will be releasing for Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One in 2023, with Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition launching on January 31, 2023, and Age of Empires 4 following later in the year. A specific launch date for the latter hasn’t yet been confirmed.

Both games will feature support for mouse and keyboard gameplay on Xbox consoles, along with the option to enable cross-play and play via Xbox Cloud Gaming. Of course, like all first party Microsoft releases, both will also be available via Xbox Game Pass.

Xbox players can also expect a new tutorial and user interface designed specifically with console gameplay in mind.

“We knew that bringing the complexity of RTS to Xbox consoles was a massive task and one we had to approach carefully and thoughtfully,” writes Emma Bridle, director of customer voice at World’s Edge. “The team has been working hard to bring an experience that not only feels great using a controller, but also teaches players how to play on Xbox. A new tutorial designed specifically for controller input paired with a new user experience for console will help players get started. We’ve also added a new game AI which helps make resource management in a strategy game efficient and intuitive.”

The announcement was made during a recent livestream celebrating Age of Empires’ 25th anniversary, where Microsoft also unveiled Age of Mythology: Retold and Age of Empires Mobile.

This update includes two new civilizations, the Ottomans and the Malians. Each will have 15 new masteries and Art of War Challenges, while new Achievements, eight new maps, and two new biomes are also coming. An additional 11 languages are also being added, including Hindi, Danish, Swedish, Czech, Greek, Polish, Finnish, Hungarian, and more.

Current owners will get the Anniversary Update for free, and the date also marks the start of Season Three with Ranked Team Games, waypoint markers and improved naval balance. Taunts and Cheats along with bug fixes are also coming as per the roadmap in June. Stay tuned for more details and patch notes in the coming weeks.

Age of Empires 4 is getting a new free update on October 25 that will add two new civilizations- the Malians of West Africa and the Ottoman empire, the latter of whom will emphasize economic strategies, with the latter being focused on military might. Both civilizations will be playable in both multiplayer and skirmish matches, and will also come with 15 new masteries each and new Art of War challenges. Check out the trailer below.

Age of Empires 4 is available on PC.

https://youtu.be/dg00xdlQOSU

During the Age of Discovery Event, completing in-game tasks within the time limits unlocks new exclusive rewards. The rewards includes new sigils and profile portraits.

Season 2 is also bringing the ability for players to prefer some maps over others for Age of Empires 4‘s multiplayer modes. Queuing for a quick match provides players with a set of 5 downvotes that they can apply to maps they don’t want to play in. Queuing for a ranked match gives players up to 3 downvotes to use.

There are plenty of quality of life features in the update as well, such as new fully remappable hotkey layouts, changes to hotkey conflicts, a toggle for “Warn Conflicts”, new camera zoom options, and a player color picker for Single Player Skirmish, Multiplayer Custom Match, Unranked Automatch, and Ranked Automatch modes.

All of this comes with a set of balance changes across the board for the game.

Season 2 of Age of Empires 4 will kick off on June 30,and it’s bringing some notable additions. The most notable of these is, of course, a new map called “The Pit”. In addition to that, the strategy title will also add the ability to fully remap hotkeys, being able to pick colours for players, a map preference system, and the expected seasonal events.

Meanwhile, later in the year, Season 3 will bring ranked team games, which has been highly requested by the player base for some time, as well as taunts and cheats, which have also been requested frequently. In addition to that, you can also expected bug fixes, balance changes, and more.

Age of Empires 4 is available on PC. Multiple developments over the past few months have suggested that the game could also be headed to Xbox. The strategy title’s developers have previously said they’re considering a console version, but no official announcement has yet been made.

As spotted by Exputer, the Microsoft Store listing for Age of Empires 4 seems to suggest that the game might soon be headed to Xbox consoles, with the page mentioning, “Online multiplayer on console requires Xbox subscription.”

Interestingly, this isn’t the first hint we’ve had that the strategy title might be headed for a console launch. Earlier this year, a product listing internal testing on the Xbox Insider Hub seemed to suggest the same.

Last after, following Age of Empires 4’s PC launch, Microsoft stated that while there were no definitive plans to bring the game to Xbox, it was something they were thinking about. Read more on that through here.

Among the big new additions is the Content Editor which launches as a beta. Designed for custom matches, it allows for creating maps, buffing certain units to the point of absurdity and much more. The development team has also designed some mods as well and there will be an upcoming stream that goes over all of the editor’s tools.

There’s also Ranked Seasons which allows players to compete and climb the ladder along with Seasonal Events for unlocking rewards via challenge completion. Quality of life features like a global build queue and improvements to hotkeys are also coming along with a new Art of War: Advanced Combat challenge and MegaRandom map. Stay tuned for more details on these in the coming days.

Age of Empires 4 is currently available for PC and playable through PC Game Pass.