'Cities: Skylines' Heads To Xbox One This Spring

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Paradox Interactive announced that its popular city management game, Cities: Skylines, will head to the Xbox One some time this Spring.

Cities: Skylines is a perennial favorite around these parts. The base game was interesting enough, but the After Dark and Natural Disasters expansions added new depth with day and night cycles and various catastrophes, respectively. Free updates have also brought new features to the city manager.

Now the game will hop from Windows to the Xbox One. Paradox Interactive said that this version of the game will include the After Dark expansion--no word on Natural Disasters yet--later this year. An announcement trailer appeared to offer a glimpse at what the console version's going to look like:

Bringing games like Cities: Skylines that are designed to be played with a keyboard and mouse to consoles is often challenging. The interface can become too streamlined at the cost of depth; it can also fail to accommodate the controller's limitations and make accomplishing basic tasks feel like a chore.

Some titles, such as Halo Wars 2, handle this problem well. Others do not. Playing the already challenging Darkest Dungeon on the PlayStation 4, for example, is a lesson in frustration with its too-small text and weird button combinations that feel about as intuitive as eating tomato soup with a fork.

It will be interesting to see where Cities: Skylines lands on that spectrum. Paradox Interactive didn't offer any information about how much the game will cost when it debuts on Xbox One (though we suspect it will run the typical $60), nor did it offer a firm release date. We'll likely learn more soon.

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NameCities: Skylines
TypeSimulation
PublisherParadox Interactive
DeveloperColossal Order
PlatformsPC, Mac, Xbox One (soon)
Where To BuyParadox StoreSteamAmazon
Release DateMarch 10, 2015 (PC, Mac)Spring 2017 (Xbox One)
Nathaniel Mott
Nathaniel Mott
Freelance News & Features Writer

Nathaniel Mott is a freelance news and features writer for Tom's Hardware US, covering breaking news, security, and the silliest aspects of the tech industry.

6 Comments Comment from the forums
  • dstarr3
    Yargh. How much do I not want to play this on a controller.
    Reply
  • JakeWearingKhakis
    Best city sim there is. Would be cool to play it in the living room without lugging around my desktop ><
    Reply
  • dstarr3
    Well, most mid-range gaming laptops will outpace an X-Bone, so you'd probably have a much better experience just hooking up the laptop to the TV and using Valve's controller from the couch.
    Reply
  • blader15sk8
    @Jakewearingkhakis, just use steam in-home streaming! An old laptop/desktop works fine, or steam link is not that expensive and works with existing PS3/4 and Xbox controllers.
    Reply
  • dstarr3
    19311129 said:
    @Jakewearingkhakis, just use steam in-home streaming! An old laptop/desktop works fine, or steam link is not that expensive and works with existing PS3/4 and Xbox controllers.

    Also a good solution. There is a bit of latency that occurs from streaming, naturally, but C:S doesn't really rely on reflexes or reaction times or frame-perfect inputs of any sort, so latency is really pretty irrelevant, especially the tiny latency streaming introduces. So a game like this is really ideal for the technology.
    Reply
  • falcompsx
    I get the desire to expand to additional customer bases, but this genre of game just isn't suited to a console. Gamepads are not well suited to pretty much any creative game. As others have said, either controls end up clunky, or there is a loss of depth in what you can do. Also a large part of this games appeal is the modding community and support, which i assume won't be available on xbox, but best of luck to paradox, hopefully they can pull off a miracle here.
    Reply