lonus Tech tips coverage of PS 2013 is brought to you by Western Digital Intel
and steel series crazy things you're announcing
here at the show or talking about here at the show we got world of war planes
which we have a separate video with you about and World of Tanks Xbox 360
Edition what did you guys do to bring the World of Tanks experience to the
console you know we did a lot actually and the first thing that's really important is that the game is not a port
we didn't just take the PC version and figure out how to squeeze it onto a
console the game is built completely from the ground up by our studio in
Chicago War gaming West formerly day one Studios if you know know about sort of
their pedigree and their experience in the gaming industry and you know what
the game is really built specifically for the 360 we spit up the pace a little
bit so tanks move a little bit faster the action unfolds a little bit quicker
and we did things also like taking the progression system of um researching new
tanks unlocking new tanks and made that a little bit quicker too because
compared to the PC version console gamers are different you know I mean we just didn't want to take the PC version
put it on the console and hope people liked it we really wanted to fine-tune
the game for those console gamers in mind well I think both PC Gamers and
console gamers are going to appreciate that because PC Gamers hate having
something as simple as uh how many key bindings they can have or how the UI is
structured they they hate seeing a console version because they're sitting
right in front of their computer so you guys have completely redesigned the UI
as well yeah we totally have you know like you mentioned on the PC World of
Tanks you're sitting in front of a monitor that's maybe a foot away from your face so looking at all the UI and
all the visual options it's easy um on the on the 360 you're probably 68 ft
away from a TV on your couch so the development team really completely
redesigned and overhauled how the UI looks and where all the different
elements are on the screen and then on the control side too obviously taking a
game that's keyboard and mouse they've done a great job of really condensing
everything onto the controller for the 360 and really losing no accessibility
and no option in the process now it's going to be a different game obviously
so crossplatform play is just not a thing what were the challenges oh
honestly yeah unfortunately there's no crossplatform play Microsoft has a very specific
infrastructure in terms of how its data centers and servers work for multiplayer
and things like that so unfortunately we just couldn't get it to work out but
honestly you know we look at going to the 360 not as really not as really an
attempt to get PC players to go to console or vice versa you know they've
got like 80 million plus 360s out there they've got 48 million live subscribers
for the 360 so it's for us it's it's a great opportunity to really get World of
Tanks in front of a completely new audience that maybe knows about us or
never even heard about us or never played our games so new audience new
game um same business model you're still not charging for the game so uh how how
does it work then how do you get access how do you play World of Tanks Xbox 360
so the game is actually it's free to play for gold so if you're a gold subscriber on Xbox Live you download the
client you're in um if you're a level below which is silver you're going to
get a 7-Day time try trial after that 7 Days expires you're going to have to
upgrade but like you said before if your gold it's free to play we're going to
have in-game purchases just like we did on World of Tanks for PC um the economy
and the pricing is pretty much going to be exactly to scale as that at the PC
version so uh the in-game items are like the PC I mean you guys have this
philosophy sort of across the board but is there going to be a competitive
Advantage really to buying ingame items no and you know that philosophy said we
call it free to win and really the basis of it is that what we want is whether
you're a paying player or not pain player you can go into our game and have
an equal experience so yeah none of our in-game purchases give you an advantage
in battle we want it to be about skill a lot of the things that we sell are based
on convenience or personalization and customization so we have consumables
things like repair kits first aid kits skins for your tanks emblems for your
tanks but nothing that's going to make you better than another player in the
game it's all about skill tell me when you're launching and tell me what you're
going to have available at launch sure so right now the game is in beta in
North America so that's US and Canada and last week we also announced the
launch of the beta in Europe um the game is going to be out this year we don't
have a firm release date yet but it will launch with about 70 tanks for the US
and German lines and then after that we have a very very aggressive schedule for
downloadable content new modes new maps new nations new tanks all of that stuff
that's really made the PC version of World of Tanks such a success we're
going to totally do the same stuff on 360 that sounds fantastic so thank you
Chris for taking the time to hang out with us yeah it's been a pleasure thank
you and guys just a reminder our sponsors here at the show our Western
Digital Intel and steel series huge thanks to them for allowing us to be
here