Earlier in the week, we heard that Microsoft were bringing a free-to-play version of Age of Empires to Android in the near future. This was expected to be the first of many Xbox titles to be ported to Android over the coming months. Fortunately, the first part of the rumour is true – Microsoft’s director of Xbox Live programming, Larry Hyrb (AKA Major Nelson) confirmed in a blog post that Age of Empires would indeed be coming to Android in the near future. Unfortunately, he went on to say that reports that other Xbox games would be ported across to Android or iOS were ‘inaccurate’ and that he had no announcements ‘beyond “Age of Empires” at this time’. Microsoft VP of their internal games studio, Phil Spencer, elaborated on Twitter, saying that the original Reuters article that started the rumour was a mistranslation, and clearly stated that they are not bringing their Xbox titles to any other platform.
@karlcramer @wpcentral The article is a translation error, we are not bringing XBOX games to non-MS devices.
— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) June 25, 2013
Disappointingly, Android Police are saying that this new title is not a port of an existing Age of Empires game, but rather a completely new game by Japanese developer Klab, who are responsible for such games as Arcadia, Gigabot Wars and Eternal Uprising, that just happens to use the ‘Age of Empires’ name.
