One of the most popular post-apocalyptic multiplayer survival games of the last few years has announced that it will finally be porting to consoles this May.
Rust began early access in 2013 with an official launch in 2018, but that whole time the game was PC-only. That’s all about to change as it will be coming to both the Xbox One and the Playstation 4 on May 21. The kicker here is that the new Rust Console Edition will be supported by a different developer (Double Eleven) as a “separate experience,” according to an extensive blog post on the company’s website that further explains the console edition.
“Rust is and forever will be the baby and brainchild of Facepunch and we’re extremely grateful to be able to take what they’ve done and create our own version of their game,” Double Eleven’s Pedro Silva wrote in the blog. “Rust Console Edition is certainly Rust as people know it, but under the hood where we’ve spent the last few years, we’ve created a completely different beast designed for consoles and their respective players.”
We first started talking to Facepunch in 2016 about the idea of creating a Console version of Rust and how that could work. We knew early on that the two games would need to be in separate universes given that the PC edition can expand as it needed to.
— Rust_Console_Update_News (@rust_beta) March 26, 2021
The post goes on to explain the importance of maintaining such a dedicated and established community as the game opens up a whole new avenue, and some of the challenges the team faced with the console port.
“To accommodate the game on these systems, some light optimisations wouldn’t cut it! So the team needed to rip apart and rewrite major engine subsystems within Unity,” the post states. “Some of the systems we designed and refactored helped us a lot, improving the performance of the game over on consoles.”
While there’s no word yet of availability on the next gen consoles, the team at Double Eleven promises regular updates and cooperation with Facepunch (the PC developer) along the way.
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