- Tencent has confirmed that it is developing a mobile version of Age of Empires targeting the Chinese market
- The game is the latest in a series of mobile releases for the gaming industry which is focusing on the mobile experience more intensely
- There is no promise that Age of Empires' mobile version will ever leave China or that it would be an esports title to begin with
Age of Empires timeless legacy lives on as the game is now debuting as a mobile game in China.
Tencent Recreates Age of Empires for Mobile
For many players, Age of Empires is one of the best games to have ever blessed the PC platform. As the game is being reworked once more, hoping to bring its former glory to the fore and relaunch the esports community around it, there seems to be more happening around this timeless classic.
Tencent is now working to recreate the unique game to mobile and it will be a blast by the looks of it. Titled “Return to the Empire,” the game was revealed during the Tencent annual game conference. This proves to be a fantastic piece of news that will bring a beloved real-time strategy game to the mobile segment.
Whether the platform can handle the complexity of an RTS title, especially one that has inspirations to be played competitively, remains to be seen. In the meantime, it wasn't until Daniel Ahmad, known by his Twitter handle as @ZhugeEX, shared the news that the western world caught wind of the developments.
The responsibility of bringing the game to China will lie with Timi Studios, a Tencent game development arm, which has been working on titles such as CoD: Mobile, Pokémon Unite, and others. The studio is actually teaming up with Subsidiary World's Edge and Xbox Game studios to recreate the Age of Empires experience on handheld devices.
“Return to Empires'” Esports Potential
While we would be excited to see a mobile version of Age of Empires in the west, the game's main market will be China and it may take a while before we see the game arrive if it arrives at all. The mobile market has been growing rapidly across the world, and the transition of a fully-fledged strategy onto handheld devices begs the question of whether the game could become an esports title.
Starcraft pros were known to play with a blindfold and still defeat players who could see the battlefield. In a similar vein, mastering an RTS from handheld devices is probably a superhuman task but one that could be achieved by the more ambitious gamers out there.
There is no guarantee that Return to Empires will be featured as an esports title, but tracking its popularity across China would be interesting.
