Despite the fact that State of Decay 2 just launched about a month ago, it appears that Microsoft is looking to begin development on a threequel to the open world zombie survival franchise. For those unaware, it was announced at E3 that Microsoft had acquired five new studios, including Undead Labs, in order to focus on exclusive titles. In a recent interview, Head of Microsoft Studios, Matt Booty, revealed that Undead Labs was acquired specifically for State of Decay 3.

After praise for State of Decay 2, which has reportedly received two million players since launch, Booty continued on to reveal that Undead Labs was a "State of Decay 3 team." While the team may have smaller projects, it seems like a defined answer that its primary focus will be the next entry, and it's also worth mentioning that Booty may have provided some key information concerning the project.

Apparently, Microsoft had envisioned a bigger game with a "more persistent online" function and bringing Undead Labs into the company should accelerate the aforementioned vision for the franchise. It'll be interesting to see if and how the studio makes these improvements in the next installment, especially now that it has Microsoft's backing.

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In the meantime, State of Decay 2 is available to play and should continue to receive post-game support for some time. It's worth mentioning that a recent 20GB patch aimed to fix a number of launch issues, such as a reduction in crashing issues and in-game bugs, recently went live. While the game did launch with a number of issues, perhaps this assimilation into Microsoft will give Undead Labs the support the studio needs to improve the State of Decay experience.

Nevertheless, for those who are on the fence about trying out the game, check out our State of Decay 2 review. Fans of the first game may very well enjoy the sequel and rejoice at this news of a third installment, but considering the second game just launched, State of Decay 3 is likely years off. Until then, it'll be interesting to see what comes to State of Decay 2 post-launch.

State of Decay 2 is available now for PC and Xbox One.

Source: Eggplante