The Age of Empires franchise is taking another stab at a mobile release. Announced as part of Age of Empires’ 25th-anniversary celebration, Age of Empires Mobile should be making its way to iOS and Android devices sometime soon, and there’s a teaser trailer available for the curious.
The teaser shows little beyond a cinematic visual, but the visual elements are akin to the latest PC installment, Age of Empires IV. That game launched with a bold design language, helping players easily pick out individual gameplay elements. This type of design would translate nicely to mobile and echoes Civilization VI, another popular strategy game that’s since pivoted to bolder graphics, which helped ease the transition to mobile.
It’s reasonable to be concerned about how an Age of Empires game would work on mobile, but many of the best strategy games on Android are nearly direct ports of their PC counterparts. Company of Heroes, XCOM 2, Total War, and Northgard are all titles that use clever UI tricks to replicate the PC experience without sacrificing what made the PC versions great.
We still have painful memories of the last time we saw the Age of Empires name on a mobile game. Sadly, it remains to be seen if Age of Empires Mobile will exist as a port of Age of Empires 4 or just the global version of Return to Empire from Tencent’s TiMi Studios.
It’s even more exciting for Microsoft. The company has made great strides into the mobile gaming market in the last year, working with Logitech with its new gaming handheld and ensuring the Game Pass is an integral part of the Gamevice Flex, along with controllers from GameSir and MOGA. Yet despite a solid footing in the mobile peripheral market, Microsoft hasn’t delved too deeply into dedicated mobile games. Game Pass is a fine way to stream games on the go, but having a suite of mobile games is a logical next step, along with their possible plans to build a mobile gaming store to compete with Apple and Google.
Overall, it’s an exciting time for Age of Empires fans and mobile gamers. While we don’t have a release date yet, we’ll keep you updated on future announcements.
