DayZ is one of the most (or was, depending on who you ask) the most popular PC game on the market today. It introduced the world to a new type of survival horror, dropping dozens of players on a massive map filled with zombies and giving them little to no resources. It made players scavenge for resources and fight over things like weapons, vehicles, and even territory. It's like a real zombie survival simulator. It's a very cool game but it has had its issues.
The game originally started out as a mod for a military simulator called ARMA 2 and then evolved into a full blown standalone game after it reached massive popularity on the internet. The full game released in 2013 in early access but was plagued with tons of bugs and glitches that have angered many fans. Many players report, nearly three years later, that the game is still not fixed. These issues didn't stop Bohemian Interactive from announcing a console version at Gamescom 2014 though!
The console version was announced and little to nothing has come from it, barely even a peep from Bohemian Interactive. Many assumed the game was just quietly swept under the rug and it would never see the light of day, however creative director Brian Hicks assures us that is not the case.
"No it's not dead at all," Hicks said when speaking to Eurogamer. "It's not dead at all.
"The PC is our flagship platform for DayZ. That is where 99 per cent of our development resources are focused. And while there was a lot of push from Sony and Microsoft to get up on their stages and say 'yes, we're coming', our focus has been exclusively (I want to say exclusively because there's about a one per cent development resource trying to keep those platforms at a point at which, once we get to our beta and our bug fixing, we can start pushing forward on that) on the PC. We can't really move DayZ over to these platforms, at least on a playable level for consumers, until the base engine, Enfusion, is complete. Or if not complete, feature-complete so to speak – the core tech is there."
Although the game isn't getting much attention and isn't the highest priority for the developers, Hicks says that Microsoft is actively pushing to get a playable build out on Xbox One. The port is highly anticipated for many since console players have never gotten the chance to play the game, but they will more than likely have to continue waiting as Hicks says they are focusing on the PC build at this time.
"Microsoft has been very eager – I'll say this much – for us to get it on their platform, the Xbox Game Preview programme," says Hicks. "We do keep a small group of programmers on making sure that our PS4 and our Xbox One version are at least, tech wise, it's running on those platforms. But we're not going to be releasing any announcements on dates for those and I don't think we ever have.
"Once we get to a point with the PC that we're comfortable and we can start dedicating a little resources into catching up those [console] platforms then we'll look at doing some announcements and talk about the Xbox Game Preview programme, which is what I would imagine is the first place we'll get to since Sony doesn't have something similar."
Similarly, Daybreak Games' H1Z1's (another zombie survival game spawned in the wake of DayZ) console version has also been put on hold while they push the PC version out of early access. The game was said to release on PS4 long ago but nothing ever came of that. The developers say that they'll continue to work on the console version once they are happy with the PC version.
