DayZ, the once-booming multiplayer open-world survival game remains in development today, following its unveiling over five years ago. Building on a concept established in the "DayZ Mod" for ARMA 2, which saw a surge of popularity in 2012, the standalone release promises to translate this experience into a full retail title.
Despite the game essentially falling into obscurity, DayZ is apparently still in active development today. The standalone game is still seeing new features via its Steam Early Access version, with a full release currently on track for 2018. And according to a recent blog post on the DayZ site, an Xbox One debut is still on the roadmap too.
As soon as the PC BETA is headed in a way we like, we're still committed to bringing DayZ to Xbox, where we have a large community of gamers patiently (very patiently!) waiting for a truly hardcore online survival game. All of that will (and must) happen next year - meaning we're just about to start what could possibly be the most exciting year for DayZ so far. In short: DayZ will be out of Early Access next year, and we'll also finally deliver it to console players in 2018.
Back in the day, DayZ was praised for establishing online survival games among the mainstream, gaining traction as one of the biggest PC games at the time. However, once game creator, Dean Hall, departed the project for a new studio, its development and popularity continued to dwindle. Today, DayZ and ARMA 2 are nowhere to be seen among Steam's most played titles – maybe the ship has truly sailed. With hundreds of survival games in the years since, and games that thrive on similar mechanics, the relevance of DayZ is questionable in 2017.
Talk of a console version first arose back in 2014, meaning at least four years will have passed if the game releases late next year. Based on the wording of the blog post, it seems DayZ's console release will have ties to the Xbox platform in some form, specifically naming the platform over PlayStation 4. Whether this could be a debut via the "Game Preview" program, or total console exclusivity, we'll have to wait for the months ahead.
