Remember when the internet was ablaze with people talking about Bohemia Interactive’s DayZ title? Well, recently it’s hit over four million units sold, finally launched into beta on the PC, and a major update is heading to the Xbox Game Preview version of the title this week.
DayZ was in Early Access way back in 2013 and since then it has been slowly moving along. It was announced in 2014 that the title had plans to arrive on PS4 at some point in the future; in that same year, Phil Spencer said he wanted DayZ on the Xbox One and of course it landed on Xbox Game Preview in 2018.
For those that don’t know what the title is, players are survivors to a post-apocalyptic Chernarus, a fictional place that is now riddled with zombies/infected. On top of zombies, other players are running around finding loot to enable them to survive from injuries, hunger, and various other survival elements. Not everyone is friendly, and so you’re given the choice to either go it alone, have friends join you, or make new ones…hopefully.
On November 7 DayZ entered into a stable beta for PC, introducing a range of features such as character representation, base-building, improved zombies, and the return of vehicles. The beta also introduces the new engine which you can see in action below in the dev log video.
The 0.62 version which is running the game on the old technology has now been moved to a legacy branch on Steam, whereas the new default (stable) build is running on 0.63 Beta. Here’s what you can find in the PC version of DayZ with the new update:
- Major engine changes
- Improvements to game and network performance
- I1ntroduction of base building
- Massively improved implementation of vehicles
- More elaborate AI for infected and animals
- Major map rework to make Chernarus more beautiful and detailed
- Ability to run your own servers
- Modding Support (Only for PC)
The features being introduced to the PC beta are also being implemented into the Xbox Game Preview version of the game —minus the modding— but does not mark the start of beta on the Xbox One. It will, however, be the biggest major content update for the console version since it arrived on Xbox Game Preview in August this year.
The Xbox Game Preview version of DayZ will get its update on November 22 providing nothing goes wrong with internal testing. The console update will also introduce mouse and keyboard support for DayZ thanks to the latest Xbox update that has allowed a number of titles to use a mouse and keyboard input.
A PS4 version is still being developed and Bohemia Interactive hope to release that version next year. The PC and Xbox One versions will continue to be worked on post-launch.
DayZ is available as a stable beta on PC with plans to leave Early Access by the end of this year. It’s also available on Xbox One as a Game Preview title with plans to launch next year.