Gadgetory

Linus tech tips coverage of pax 2013 is brought to you by Western Digital Intel and steelseries crazy things you're announcing here at the show or talking about here at the show we got World of Warplanes which we have a separate video with you about and World of Tanks xbox 360 edition what did you guys do to bring the World of Tanks experience to the console you know we did a lot actually in the first thing that's really important is that the game is not a port we didn't just take the pc version and figure out how to squeeze it onto a console the game is built completely from the ground up by our studio in chicago wargaming West formerly day 1 studios if you know about sort of their pedigree in their experience in the gaming industry and you know the game is really built specifically for the 360 we spin up the pace a little bits of Tanks move a little bit faster the action unfolds a little bit quicker and we did things also like taking the progression system of researching new tanks unlocking new tanks and made that a little bit quicker too because compared to the pc version console gamers are different you know we just didn't want to take the pc version put it on the console and hope people liked it we really wanted to fine-tune the game for those console gamers in mind well I think both PC gamers and console gamers are going to appreciate that because pc gamers hate having something as simple as how many key bindings they can have or how the UI is structured they hate seeing a console version because they're sitting right in front of their computer so you guys have completely redesigned the UI as well yeah we totally have you know like you mentioned on the pc world of tanks you're sitting in front of a monitor that's maybe a foot away from your face so looking at all the UI and all the visual options it's easy on the 360 you're probably six to eight feet away from a TV on your couch so the development team really completely redesigned and overhauled how the UI looks and where all the different elements are on the screen and then on the control side to obviously taking a game that's keyboard and mouse they've done a great job of really condensing everything onto the controller for the 360 and really losing no accessibility and no auction in the process now it's going to be a different game obviously so cross-platform play is just not a thing what were the challenges I honestly yeah unfortunately there's no cross-platform play Microsoft has a very specific infrastructure in terms of how its data centers and servers work for multiplayer and things like that so we just couldn't get it to work out but honestly you know we look at going to the 360 not as really that is really an attempt to get pc players to go to console or vice versa you know they've got like 80 million plus 360 s out there they've got 48 million live subscribers for the 360 so for us it's it's a great opportunity to really get world of tanks in front of a completely new audience that maybe knows about us or never even heard about us or never played our games so new audience new game same business model you're still not charging for the game so how does it work then how do you get access how do you play World of Tanks xbox 360 so the game is actually it's free to play for gold so if you're gold subscriber on Xbox Live you download the client you're in if you're a level below it's a silver you're going to get a seven day time trial after that seven days expires you're gonna have to upgrade but like you said before you if your gold it's free to play we're going to have ingame purchases just like we did on World of Tanks for pc the economy and the pricing is pretty much gonna be exactly to scale is that at the pc version so the in-game items are like the pc i mean you guys have this philosophy sort of across the board but is there going to be a competitive advantage really to buying in-game items know and you know that philosophy said we call it free to win and the really the basis of it is that what we want is with your pain player or non paying player you can go into our game and have an equal experience so yeah none of our in-game purchases give you an advantage in battle we want it to be about skill a lot of the things that we sell are based on convenience or personalization and customization so we have consumables things like repair kits first aid kits skins for your tanks emblems for your tanks but nothing that's going to make you better than another player and again that's all that skill tell me when you're launching and tell me what you're going to have available at lunch sure so right now the game is in beta and North America so that's the US and canada and last week we also announced the launch of the beta in europe the game is going to be out this year we don't have a firm release date yet but it will launch with about 70 tanks for the US and German lines and then after that we have a very very aggressive schedule for downloadable content new modes new maps new nations new tanks all of that stuff that's really made the pc version of World of Tanks such a success we're going to totally do the same stuff on three 60 that sounds fantastic so thank you Chris for taking the time to hang out with us yeah it's been a pleasure thank you and guys just a reminder our sponsors here at the show our Western Digital Intel and steel series huge thanks to them for allowing us to be here