Nintendo's Switch has been a genuine surprise - a hybrid console based on a mobile chipset that has delivered some remarkable tech showcases: the Doom 2016 port was a mini-revelation while the Wolfenstein 2 follow-up was even more mind-blowing. But these were streamlined 60fps games pared back to 30fps, and built around an eminently scalable engine - a state of affairs that doesn't fully apply to Studio Wildcard's Ark: Survival Evolved, which seems to have been dragged kicking and screaming onto the Switch hardware with some good - and some very bad - results.
Three years after it released in Steam Early Access, and one year after it launched for real, Ark: Survival Evolved's third and final DLC expansion, Extinction, arrives today on PC. It comes to PS4 and Xbox One on November 11th.
Extinction follows on from Ark's previous paid expansions, Scorched Earth and Aberration, and introduces a brand-new map, a new selection of mechanics, and new tameable critters.
For this, its final offering, developer Studio Wildcard has once again opted to go hard on the sci-fi, foregoing Ark's earlier, more natural environments for a brooding sprawl of dereliction. Extinction's map transports players to a ravaged Earth, which, for those invested in the series' lore, "holds both the secrets of the past and the keys to its salvation". Alongside its ample wasteland, Extinction includes the remains of a sprawling metropolis, waiting to be explored.
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Studio Wildcard has announced the Switch version of its popular dinosaur-themed survival escapade, Ark: Survival Evolved, will launch on November 30th.
Ark on Switch, which was surprise-revealed back in March, has been developed in conjunction with porting studio Abstraction Games, and promises to deliver an authentic take on Wildcard's open-world survival adventure - albeit one that you can play on the go and perhaps even on a dinosaur if you know any.
The Switch version features Ark's original Island map and includes over 100 creatures. Some of these are inspired by actual prehistoric fauna, from the mighty T. rex to the Giganotosaurus, while others, such as the yeti, are pure fantasy fare. Many of these can be tamed, ridden, bred, or simply just murdered and eaten. Don't mess with the Giganotosaurus though, it's mean.
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Valve has stepped up its anti-cheat measures and issued almost 95,000 bans in the last week alone.
Streaming video games is big business for some. Tyler "Ninja" Blevins reportedly makes $500,000 a month playing Fortnite on Twitch. But for the vast majority of streamers, barely anyone's watching, and precious few are paying. For the vast majority, streaming is a hobby. For others, it's the hope of something bigger - a bigger audience, perhaps, more views, more comments and, of course, more money.
Studio Wildcard has announced that its dino-survival extravaganza Ark: Survival Evolved will be heading to mobile devices next week, on June 14th.
Studio Wildcard has announced that its enormously popular dinosaur survival game Ark: Survival Evolved is making its way to iOS and Android mobile devices "this spring".
With Aberration, Ark: Survival Evolved's third expansion, now released, developer Wildcard is turning its attention back to the core game, and addressing some of its longest-standing issues. As part of that effort, it's unveiled more details on its long-promised TLC update, designed to beautify, and improve, some of Ark's oldest, and weirdest looking animals.
The aim of the multi-part process is, essentially, to add relevance to some of the game's earliest creatures, whose basic functionality has long been superseded by newer, more exciting additions. As a happy bonus, Wildcard is also taking the opportunity to update some of the Ark's older, more rudimentary creature model.
Four such creatures will be getting a TLC overhaul as part of Ark's Phase 1 update, which is expected to arrive in the week of February 18th: the Direbear, Procoptodon, Gigantopithecus, Direwolf, and Tyrannosaurus Rex. Wildcard has also shared a few details on Phase 2, which will seek to improve the Argentavis, and Spinosaur among others. Look!
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Update, 27/3/18: Ark: Survival Evolved's intriguing Minecraft-like spin-off PixArk is now available in Steam Early Access and on Xbox Game Preview.
Ark: Survival Evolved has finally arrived on the Windows 10 store and as an Xbox Play Anywhere title, so if you bought the game digitally on Xbox One, you also already own it on Windows 10. Two versions for the price of one, basically.
A second expansion pack for Ark: Survival Evolved has launched on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. It's called Aberration and it is, as the title suggests, unusual.
Aberration is the name of a malfunctioning Ark with an underground biome. There's radioactive sunlight, earthquakes, ziplines, wingsuits, climbing gear and weird creatures. There are spooky humanoids called Nameless, and Reapers who impregnate enemies to spawn offspring. Apparently if you let the Reaper Queen impregnate you, you spawn a Reaper you can tame and control.
It won't be the only new beast you can tame. You can climb and fly on the back of a camouflaged Rock Drake chamaeleon thing; you can stamp around with a giant Cave Crustacean, which is probably an overgrown crab; and you can light the way with a Lantern Pet.
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Studio Wildcard has announced that Ark: Survival Evolved's next full-scale, paid-for expansion Aberration will release on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 on December 12th.
Aberration, which was originally slated to release in October, is the second paid-for expansion to come to Ark, following last year's desert-themed Scorched Earth.
Its main feature is a new, horror-tinged map, set on an inhospitable, malfunctioning Ark - which, for those not in the know, are basically [MILD SPOILER] giant, floating space zoos run by some very naughty aliens [/MILD SPOILER].
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Ark developer Studio Wildcard has detailed the Xbox One X enhancements coming to its dinosaur survival-adventure game.
There was a time when Digital Foundry would produce bespoke performance videos - and indeed Eurogamer articles - for virtually every major release. With so many games seemingly rushed to market, how well a particular title would run was a crucial factor in any purchasing decision. Thankfully, quality in this area is much improved across the board, but in the case of Ark: Survival Evolved, performance remains a major weakness for the game - even now, after finally emerging from Early Access.
I've been playing Ark: Survival Evolved for almost two years now, and I'm still not 100 per cent sure if it's a good game. Strip away the appealing dinosaur-themed veneer, and developer Studio Wildcard's long-in-early-access survival adventure starts to look surprisingly routine. Its core systems are overly familiar, uninspired even, and more than a little wobbly; it's devoid of depth or nuance, and it's a survival game where the only resource that's required most readily is your time. Yet, for all its foibles, I've poured hundreds of happy hours into Ark, and I'll doubtless play even more.
Ark: Survival Evolved
Developer: Studio Wildcard
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Last week Ark: Survival Evolved developer Wildcard said PlayStation 4-Xbox One cross-play worked internally but Sony "won't allow" it publicly.
Towards the end of 2014, Jeremy Stieglitz and Jesse Rapczak knew they wanted to make a game together. "It was just Jesse and me in the beginning. You don't set out as 'let's build a team and make a game but we don't have an idea for a game'. It was quite the opposite," Stieglitz says. The team they built would soon be known as Studio Wildcard, and even though they didn't know it yet, they were about to run one of the most successful Early Access campaigns ever for a game called Ark: Survival Evolved.
Popular multiplayer dinosaur survival (isn't that an oxymoron?) game Ark: Survival Evolved cannot let PlayStation 4 and Xbox One players play together because Sony apparently "won't allow it".
The release date for Ark: Survival Evolved has been pushed back by three weeks.
Earlier this month, Studio Wildcard hiked the price of its dinosaur survival hit Ark to £49.99 on Steam. It's fair to say the move ruffled a few feathers.
It's not often a developer changes its mind about a decision that would have had a seismic impact on its game just a day after announcing it to press, but that's exactly what the people behind dinosaur survival hit Ark have done.
Surprise! Ark: Survival Evolved comes out on PlayStation 4 on 6th December.
The open-ended dinosaur hit is already out on PC and Xbox One.
The Ark: Survivor's Pack will be available to buy. This includes the base game and the desert-themed expansion, Scorched Earth.
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UPDATE 6/9/16 9.30am: Ark developer Wildcard has issued a statement to fans enraged by the release of paid expansion Scorched Earth while the base Ark game is still in development.
In a blog posted to the game's official site, community manager Jat laid out the studio's "official take on the Scorched Earth Expansion Pack, and the future of ARK".
The message emphasises how development on Ark is still ongoing, despite the launch of the expansion - whose "early" release will allow for future expansions to be integrated far easier.
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Steam Early Access and Xbox Game Preview hit Ark: Survival Evolved is getting a "completely finished" expansion today.
Ark: Scorched Earth will strand players in a harsh, fiery new desert area populated by Wyverns, because you wouldn't want things to be easy in a survival game, would you?
While separate to the main game's area, players will be able to travel between the two locations and share items gleaned from the expansion.
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The developer of dinosaur survival hit Ark has folded free-to-play spin-off Survival of the Fittest back into the main game, Survival Evolved.
Ark: Survival of the Fittest, the competitive multiplayer online survival arena spin-off of the main Ark game, will not come out on PlayStation 4 in July as previously announced.
Ark: Survival Evolved developer Studio Wildcard has been hit by a lawsuit which may threaten the game's future.
Ark: Survival Evolved developer Studio Wildcard has announced a free-to-play spin-off entitled Ark: Survival of the Fittest.
The developers of hugely popular dinosaur survival game Ark are working on a patch that they say will improve the frame-rate of the Xbox One version.
Last month Digital Foundry took a look at Ark on Xbox One and found its frame-rate in poor shape. Here's a snippet:
The game is crying out for a 30fps cap with an adaptive v-sync solution. Romps through swampland on both builds can see frame-rate dip well below 20fps, illustrating just how much of a challenge the developers face in getting Ark: Survival Evolved into shape.
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Ark: Survival Evolved is getting split-screen multiplayer both online and locally on Xbox One, developer Studio Wildcard announced in its upcoming patch notes.
Ark: Survival Evolved - in its current, preview state - is best described as something of a technological work-in-progress in its Xbox One incarnation. By every measurable criteria Digital Foundry can attach to the game, it can often border on the disastrous. And yet, even in its early access form, Studio Wildcard has managed to shift over 1m copies, building a dedicated fanbase on both console and PC. Put simply, in this preview form, it's a triumph of concept over execution. Already a 'monster' hit, gamers have invested in the title's early access status and one of its key attractions is that users feel as though they're involved in the title's ongoing development.
Early Access dinosaur adventure Ark: Survival Evolved will storm its way onto Xbox One next week, on 16th December.
The Steam hit will launch on Xbox One via the Xbox Game Preview programme, the console's own early access service. That means there will be a free playable trial, too.
Ark lets you hunt dinosaurs, tame dinosaurs, ride dinosaurs, fly dinosaurs and live on dinosaurs.
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Four cool games are free to play on Steam this weekend.
ARK: Survival Evolved developer Studio Wildcard, in association with Alienware, are giving away $25k in a contest to folks who can make the best mods for its prehistoric playground.
Microsoft revealed a handful of independent titles comes to Xbox One and Windows 10 at its Gamescom press conference.
First off, acclaimed world-building sim Cities: Skylines will be making its console debut on Xbox One.
Dinosaur-hunting open world affair Ark: Survival Evolved and Team 17's bunker-based survival sim Sheltered are will be making their console debut on Xbox One as well via the Early Access-like Game Preview initiative.
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Ark: Survival Evolved, the dinosaur game currently the top selling title on Steam, has sold one million copies.
Dinosaur-taming open-world game ARK: Survival Evolved's developer Wildcard is offering its Early Access players $100 if they report any hacks.
What a week! Between Lego Worlds, XCOM 2 and Fallout 4, it's been game announcement crazy - not to mention Ark: Survival Evolved rampaging its way onto Steam Early Access.
ARK: Survival Evolved aims to turn Jurassic Park into an open-world PvP game for PC, Mac, Linux, PS4 and Xbox One.
