An Xbox PC Game Pass exclusive just got a release date and no one noticed

By Carli Velocci Published June 13, 2024

Nefertiti in Egypt menu in Ara: History Untold. An upgrade on screen is called Rays of the Aten: Farms and their Upgrades provide an additional +1 food per turn — Xbox Game Studios

Xbox is going all in on strategy games. On Wednesday, it announced that Ara: History Untold is coming to PC on September 24 and will be available on day one with PC Game Pass.

Weirdly enough, though, the news coverage has been slim, despite Xbox releasing a whole podcast about it and the soon-to-release Age of Mythology: Retold from the Age of Empires team. It’s also strange that the news didn’t pop up in this summer’s Xbox Game Showcase, which took place days ago. The podcast and blog is all there is to show how Xbox is committed to real-time strategy.

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Ara: History Untold, developed by Oxide Games, is specifically a historical strategy game in the vein of Sid Meier’s Civilization series or Age of Empires. It features gorgeous graphics, leaders from across civilization that fit into different playstyles, and what are called simultaneous turns for multiplayer.

“The way that works is you submit your actions, and everyone else in the world submits their actions at the same time, and then they all get resolved together,” Oxide President Marc Meyer told Xbox. “It’s not a situation where if you go first, you get to get the claim; the person who goes second doesn’t get the claim. In this model, everyone goes at the same time.” This also means that you can take as long as you want to play a turn (as long as everybody else you’re playing with is alright with that, of course).

The game was revealed at the Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase in 2022, although it was a bit overshadowed by news of Hideo Kojima’s Xbox partnership and Starfield‘s gameplay reveal. The company in general has been light on marketing specific games this year leading up to their launches. Many people online commented that Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 also didn’t get a ton of marketing immediately ahead of its May launch.

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Carli is a technology, culture, and games editor and journalist. They were the Gaming Lead and Copy Chief at Windows Central…

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