Age of Empires 4 launched on Steam and the Xbox Marketplace for PC. It’s also available on the first day for your PC if you have the Xbox Games Pass for PC or the Ultimate edition, allowing you to play it for free, so long as you have an active subscription. Because it’s on the Xbox Game Pass, is there a chance Age of Empires 4 could make its way over to Xbox Console?
Unfortunately, the marketing for Age of Empires 4 has been a little confusing. The game is available on the PC version of the Game Pass and for the Game Pass Ultimate edition, including the Xbox-exclusive Game Pass version and the PC version. However, despite being a part of the Game Pass Ultimate edition, you won’t be able to play Age of Empires on a console. You can only play it through your PC from the Xbox application by purchasing the game, having a subscription to Game Pass for PC or the Ultimate edition, or buying it on Steam.
We don’t know if Age of Empires 4 will be available on Xbox Consoles in the future. If the team did it, things could be complicated given the number of hotkeys players use on a mouse and keyboard and the general controls. It might be possible if it was required for players to hook up a mouse and keyboard through consoles, but it seems pretty unlikely.
For now, players can only download and plage Age of Empires 4 if they do it from a PC.
