Ark: Survival Ascended, the Unreal Engine 5 remake of Ark: Survival Evolved, has hit its targeted October launch and is out now on PC. The Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 versions, though? They’ve been pushed back to a November release date.
Update: The trailer launched during the Xbox Partner Presentation, which simply stated the release was coming “soon”. We’ve updated this article to reflect new information.
It’s all looking pretty solid from that trailer, with all of Ark’s popular dinosaur world survival sim shenanigans, and thankfully we don’t have to wait all that much longer on console. Studio Wildcard recently tweeted on X that the game has been submitted for ASA certification, but it’s far easier to release a game on PC, so the team has decided to split the launch.
Ark: Survival Ascended had already been delayed as Studio Wildcard get to grips with Unreal Engine 5.2, working fully cross-platform and making both a remaster and a sequel at the same time. This remaster fully implements Unreal Engine’s Lumen lighting, Nanite mesh rendering, Chaos physics, and more
Survival Ascended’s delay also had the bitter pill that it will comes with less content than originally intended. The planned release dates for The Island and Scorched Earth have been separated, with the latter now coming along in December, while Ragnarok and Aberration will follow in Q1 2024. The full game and content from Ark: Survival Evolved will have made the transition by the end of 2024.
As a consequence of these changes, announced a few months ago, Ark: Survival Ascended will now be launching with an Early Access price of $45, and a launch discount down to $40. That’s a decent reduction from the planned $60 price tag.
As for Ark 2? Well… let’s just say that it’s probably still technically expected in ‘late 2024’, but that this is certainly rather doubtful.
