What you need to know
- Cities: Skylines is a critically-acclaimed city builder available across PC and consoles.
- On Wednesday, Colossal Order and Paradox Interactive announced Cities: Skylines Remastered for Xbox Series X|S and PS5.
- The current-gen optimized edition will bring UI and UX improvements, graphical upgrades, and support for much larger cities.
- It'll release as a separate edition on Feb. 15, 2023, and will be given for free to current Cities: Skylines console owners.
One of the only decent city builder and management games on consoles is Cities: Skylines, but don't let the scarcity of the genre fool you — Cities: Skylines is a critically acclaimed, much beloved city builder, and the teams at Colossal Order and Paradox Interactive are about to deliver a sizeable upgrade to current-gen console players.
On Wednesday, Cities: Skylines Remastered was announced, a brand-new edition of the gargantuan sim, which optimizes the title to look and run better on Xbox Series X|S and PS5 consoles. Players can look forward to a number of improvements to the Cities: Skylines experience when playing on the latest and greatest consoles, including:
- Increased graphical performance, although exact upgrades weren't detailed
- Support for up to 25 tiles when building cities, instead of just 16 on Xbox One
- A built-in map editor
- Various UI and UX improvements, including a quick selection tool, precision placements, distance indicator, and more advanced snapping options
- An environmental controls panel
Cities: Skylines Remastered officially releases on Feb. 15, 2023 for Xbox Series X|S and PS5, and will retail for USD $39.99. However, existing console owners need not fork up the cash to upgrade, as the new and improved Cities: Skylines will be given to current players for free, including all DLC and expansions up to Cities: Skylines Airports released this time last year. Remaining DLC will be released for Cities: Skylines Remastered in the coming months.
Cities: Skylines has long been one of the greatest city management sims on Windows PCs, and its console port was genuinely excellent. Now, the game is being freed from the constraints of the previous generation, and will be able to take advantage of the added power of Xbox Series X and S consoles. For many, this alone will be enough to rocket the game back up to the top of the best Xbox games currently available.
