War Thunder dev: Microsoft needs to ‘stop talking and start basically doing something’

War Thunder developer Anton Yudintsev isn't impressed with Microsoft's handling of online gaming, particularly with free-to-play MMOs.

Speaking to Edge, Yudintsev expressed disappointment in Microsoft, despite the company's recent announcements regarding self-publishing and patching on the Xbox One.

"Microsoft… they have yet to decide how they’re doing online free-to-play and self-published games," Yudintsev said. "They’re pretty far from that, even with their latest initiative."

He continued, "They need to stop talking and start basically doing something. Because right now you need to certify your servers with Microsoft, you need to make… it’s not yet clear if there will be updates. If you can’t make updates without Microsoft [approval] they ruin the idea of online gaming, basically. They’ve said there’ll be some kind of opportunity [for that] but haven’t yet said quite exactly how it’ll be working."

Elsewhere in the interview, Yudintsev explained that the Xbox One's inability to support cross-platform play was the primary cause for the game not launching on the system.

"Well the main thing is you need a lot of people in the game for online gaming to make your game successful. And Sony allows us to make cross-platform games for PS4 and they allow us to make simultaneous updates. We have a digital agreement; we can make simultaneous updates on PC and PS4," he said. "That means there will be a lot of players playing from day one. They will be on PC but [playing] with PS4 players. This is one thing. The second is that PS4 is so powerful, and the architecture is similar to PC, so it’s much easier to maintain simultaneous updates."

Of course, Xbox One owners will have more then enough military shooters to keep them occupied — I'm talking Battlefield 4, Call of Duty: Ghosts, and Titanfall.

[Edge]