Wargaming has had an amazing run with World of Tanks, the massively multiplayer “free-to-win” tank battle game for PC that’s rolled to an immense audience of over 100 million people globally. The company has already taken the game to mobile success with World of Tanks Blitz, and entered the console gaming market in February 2014 with the official release of World of Tanks for the Xbox 360, which now has over 6 million registered users. That game represented an interesting milestone, with a major free-to-play game on Xbox Live where previously Microsoft had not embraced that business model.

Now, though, Microsoft is even coming out with its own free-to-play games (Fable Legends is coming soon to the Xbox One), and Wargaming has moved forward to conquer new gaming territory with the release of World of Tanks for the Xbox One. The game is gorgeous, with fully rendered 3D environments, and the tight gameplay fans have come to expect — along with battlefield-altering physics, where any damage you do remains and smolders, adding smoke to the map.

Brian Willits, associate console producer for Wargmaing, spoke to [a]listdaily about bringing this popular game to the Xbox One.

What did you learn from World of Tanks on Xbox 360, and how did that influence World of Tanks on Xbox One?

Releasing World of Tanks on Xbox 360 was a huge learning experience. We rebuilt the game to be better suited for console gaming and everything from control schemes to UI had to be finessed to perfection. With Xbox One there were opportunities for even more game enhancements, we recreated every map from the ground up to take full advantage of the HD textures and models, enhanced lighting, volumetric smoke and particle effects, dug into the physics engine for a more destructible environment, and offer fully rendered vistas to truly bring the battlefield to life.

Do you expect the audience for the Xbox One to resemble the audience for the Xbox 360, in terms of demographics and in terms of monetization?

World of Tanks is the #1 Free-to-Play game on Xbox. When we first launched on Xbox 360 a year and a half ago, console players may not have known what to expect from a Free-to-Play game. But we’ve built a solid reputation on how much we make available to people without ever having to pay a dime. One of Wargaming’s core values is to ensure that our games are “Free-to-Win,” meaning that whether you enjoy for free or choose to spend, you can never purchase an in battle advantage over your opponents. We develop our games and monetize with a great deal of integrity. As we expand to Xbox One, Free-to-Play is definitely more commonly understood than it was a couple years ago and we expect console audiences in general to be more interested in titles that are entering that space. We’re excited to continue to deliver AAA gameplay for free.

You’ve cross-connected the Xbox 360 audience with the Xbox One audience — how important do you think this feature is, and why?

World of Tanks was very successful on Xbox 360 and we felt it was paramount that we made sure to bring those tankers with us as we expanded to the One. We knew we wanted all progress and content to be shared across both Xbox 360 and Xbox One through our player’s Xbox Live accounts and we knew that Xbox 360 and Xbox One tankers needed to share the battlefield.

How does the Xbox One version compare to the PC version of the game, and do you expect any audience crossover?

One of the most interesting aspects of World of Tanks releasing across PC, iOS and Android, Xbox 360 and Xbox One is the way that it is reconstructed for each platform. These are not hard ports; instead we take into account player experience and expectation and change the games accordingly. As time goes on, these different development studios are simultaneously influencing each other and diverging off in their own direction. PC, console and mobile gamers may all have different wants and needs, so it is really important that we continue to listen to all of these communities and continue to evolve the game for the platform it’s on. We know from Xbox 360 there is some audience cross over and we’ll see that continue as we’ve expanded onto Xbox One, but the console version and the PC version each have their own flavor and for the most part attract different audiences.

 

What’s the marketing plan to get the word out about World of Tanks on Xbox One What sort of promotions or advertising or other marketing efforts do you plan to generate awareness?

You will definitely be seeing advertising for World of Tanks’ Xbox One release, but what might stand out to Xbox One users are the promotions they’ll see as they browse through the Xbox One dashboard.

Do you foresee putting World of Warplanes or World of Warships on consoles at some future point?

Currently, we’re very focused on our recent Xbox One launch for World of Tanks. Our games are more of a service than a product in the sense that release is just the beginning. We’re already working hard to introduce new tanks, new game modes, and new features that will make our World of Tanks experience even more amazing! World of Warships is currently in Open Beta and we’re looking to release on PC before the end of the year.