Amazon Games has had a bit of a rough time over the last couple of years. Despite its talent and financial backing, multiple of its recent projects have been canceled. Its latest game Crucible was discontinued six months after release. With that in mind, both fans and investors are keeping a close eye on its upcoming exploration age MMO New World, to see if the company can recover.
There is reason to be optimistic. New World's combat is engaging, and Amazon Games devised an opt-in PVP system to protect inexperienced New World players from griefing. Despite some controversy about its colonial setting, the game's well-rendered environments are worth exploring. The question is: Who will be able to explore it?
Updated on November 14th, 2021 by Hodey Johns: This article was originally published before the release of New World and explored the plans at that time. Now that players have gotten the chance to play a bit or hear about other gamers who are playing, they're asking this question all over again. This article has been updated to answer the question concisely, but then it also aims to give the reader as much information as possible regarding the plans for the future. This question remains important not just for New World, but any other Amazon games that are in production.
The Bad News: Not Anytime Soon
The short answer is not the one gamers were hoping to hear. Not only does it appear that the game is not coming to PlayStation 4 or PlayStation 5 anytime soon, but it's also not coming to Xbox One or Xbox Series X/S either. Amazon appears to have made this game exclusively for PC.
In a short but not sweet tweet, New World developers informed an inquirer that "New World will be playable only on PC for the foreseeable future." That doesn't leave a lot of room for interpretation or hope. Plans have not changed since this point, so right now only PC gamers can experience the grind of logging up to max level.
It's discouraging, but it's not a complete rejection of the idea. If such a task were impossible, it's likely that the team would have made that clear to prevent speculation. But, for now, no dice.
Any Chance?
This leaves players with questions. Is the game free to play? Will they change their minds? What would need to happen for this game to become available on consoles? Anyone saying this definitely will or won't happen right now isn't taking in all of the factors at play.
Plenty of games have experienced PC success and been ported over to consoles. If New World continues to be a smash hit for players in a few years, it would be foolish for the team to not at least look at the possibility to make another round of sales. It's a wait-and-see situation, so here's hoping that it works out in the gamers' favor.
New World was released on September 28, 2021, and is available on PC.