World of Tanks for Xbox 360 - A Completely Different Game! - PAX Prime 2013
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
1,105 words · ~5 min read
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lonus Tech tips coverage of PS 2013 is brought to you by Western Digital Intel
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and steel series crazy things you're announcing
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here at the show or talking about here at the show we got world of war planes
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which we have a separate video with you about and World of Tanks Xbox 360
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Edition what did you guys do to bring the World of Tanks experience to the
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console you know we did a lot actually and the first thing that's really important is that the game is not a port
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we didn't just take the PC version and figure out how to squeeze it onto a
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console the game is built completely from the ground up by our studio in
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Chicago War gaming West formerly day one Studios if you know know about sort of
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their pedigree and their experience in the gaming industry and you know what
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the game is really built specifically for the 360 we spit up the pace a little
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bit so tanks move a little bit faster the action unfolds a little bit quicker
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and we did things also like taking the progression system of um researching new
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tanks unlocking new tanks and made that a little bit quicker too because
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compared to the PC version console gamers are different you know I mean we just didn't want to take the PC version
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put it on the console and hope people liked it we really wanted to fine-tune
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the game for those console gamers in mind well I think both PC Gamers and
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console gamers are going to appreciate that because PC Gamers hate having
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something as simple as uh how many key bindings they can have or how the UI is
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structured they they hate seeing a console version because they're sitting
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right in front of their computer so you guys have completely redesigned the UI
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as well yeah we totally have you know like you mentioned on the PC World of
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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
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all the visual options it's easy um on the on the 360 you're probably 68 ft
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away from a TV on your couch so the development team really completely
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redesigned and overhauled how the UI looks and where all the different
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elements are on the screen and then on the control side too obviously taking a
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game that's keyboard and mouse they've done a great job of really condensing
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everything onto the controller for the 360 and really losing no accessibility
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and no option in the process now it's going to be a different game obviously
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so crossplatform play is just not a thing what were the challenges oh
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honestly yeah unfortunately there's no crossplatform play Microsoft has a very specific
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infrastructure in terms of how its data centers and servers work for multiplayer
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and things like that so unfortunately we just couldn't get it to work out but
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honestly you know we look at going to the 360 not as really not as really an
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attempt to get PC players to go to console or vice versa you know they've
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got like 80 million plus 360s out there they've got 48 million live subscribers
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for the 360 so it's for us it's it's a great opportunity to really get World of
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Tanks in front of a completely new audience that maybe knows about us or
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never even heard about us or never played our games so new audience new
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game um same business model you're still not charging for the game so uh how how
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does it work then how do you get access how do you play World of Tanks Xbox 360
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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
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client you're in um if you're a level below which is silver you're going to
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get a 7-Day time try trial after that 7 Days expires you're going to have to
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upgrade but like you said before if your gold it's free to play we're going to
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have in-game purchases just like we did on World of Tanks for PC um the economy
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and the pricing is pretty much going to be exactly to scale as that at the PC
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version so uh the in-game items are like the PC I mean you guys have this
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philosophy sort of across the board but is there going to be a competitive
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Advantage really to buying ingame items no and you know that philosophy said we
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call it free to win and really the basis of it is that what we want is whether
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you're a paying player or not pain player you can go into our game and have
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an equal experience so yeah none of our in-game purchases give you an advantage
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in battle we want it to be about skill a lot of the things that we sell are based
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on convenience or personalization and customization so we have consumables
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things like repair kits first aid kits skins for your tanks emblems for your
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tanks but nothing that's going to make you better than another player in the
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game it's all about skill tell me when you're launching and tell me what you're
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going to have available at launch sure so right now the game is in beta in
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North America so that's US and Canada and last week we also announced the
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launch of the beta in Europe um the game is going to be out this year we don't
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have a firm release date yet but it will launch with about 70 tanks for the US
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and German lines and then after that we have a very very aggressive schedule for
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downloadable content new modes new maps new nations new tanks all of that stuff
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that's really made the PC version of World of Tanks such a success we're
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going to totally do the same stuff on 360 that sounds fantastic so thank you
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Chris for taking the time to hang out with us yeah it's been a pleasure thank
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you and guys just a reminder our sponsors here at the show our Western
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Digital Intel and steel series huge thanks to them for allowing us to be
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here