ARK: Survival Evolved is (technically) already bigger on Xbox than PC

Excuse me while I go all "Route-One Internet" on your myriad asses, but there's really only one way to begin here:

(I can't tell you how much I wanted to Photoshop dinosaur faces onto all of those Ron Burgundy pictures in the background, but I would have been fired for time-wasting)

So, ARK: Survival Evolved - the wildly popular, dinosaur-flavoured survival game - already has a higher daily player count on Xbox One than on PC (where, let's remember, it was Steam's number one game). In under a week after release, the game had been downloaded over a million times through the Xbox Game Preview service, the console's early access programme.

Now, it's worth remembering that all Xbox Game Preview titles come with a free trial, so those aren't necessarily sales figures, nor is that player count likely to stay as high, but they'd be encouraging stats for any developer, never mind an indie studio with its debut game. Props.

This information comes from creative director Jesse Rapczak - speaking through the Xbox Wire blog - who puts the game's success down to the flood of survival games on PC as opposed to consoles' relative trickle. It should also mean that the console version gets due care and attention - while we know that the PC version will receive updates first, you can bet that with a big audience waiting for new stuff to murder with/at, we should find it comes rather swiftly.

Rapczak promises "regular updates about every two weeks" - and there's a lot already planned. "This will eventually include highly-demanded features like split screen support, gamepad customization, UI improvements, tweaks to current game modes, balancing improvements and all the new content that is going into the PC version."

By the way, that next bit of content is a giant, rideable prehistoric species of Kangaroo. It might be worth giving that free trial a spin.

Seen something newsworthy? Tell us!

Joe Skrebels
Joe first fell in love with games when a copy of The Lion King on SNES became his stepfather in 1994. When the cartridge left his mother in 2001, he turned to his priest - a limited edition crystal Xbox - for guidance. And now he's here.
Latest in Survival
Atomfall
Atomfall devs don't mind Fallout comparisons "because it's got that post-apocalyptic quarantine zone atmosphere," just like Bethesda's RPGs do
A woman in a underwater machine waving during the cinematic teaser for Subnautica 2.
Subnautica 2: Everything we know about the new underwater survival game
A misty, forested mountainside in Prologue: Go Wayback!
PUBG creator's wilderness survival game actually draws inspiration from an unexpected place - a whole raft of zombie games like DayZ, Project Zomboid, and Left 4 Dead
Terraria art showing a short-haired blond man sitting atop a grassy field in metal armor, colorful slimes on either side of him
Terraria is forever: look no further than its go-to mod tool, which just hit an all-time Steam peak ahead of surely, for real, definitely final update 1.4.5
Solarpunk airship interior
The most popular open-world survival game in Steam Next Fest is coming straight for my JRPG-born obsession with floating islands
Cubic Odyssey
This 93% positive Steam Next Fest survival game demo wants to combine Minecraft and No Man's Sky with "RPG-style depth," and so far it's actually pulling it off
Latest in News
inZOI Character Studio screenshot showing a young woman with short black/pink hair, black cat-like ears, and a black blouse with a bowtie
The creator of upcoming life sim Inzoi says he was "recklessly brave to even think about creating a game of this scale"
Rise of the Ronin
A year after its PS5 launch, Rise of the Ronin debuts on PC to "Mixed" reviews and performance complaints: "Stuttering on a 4090 is just... no"
Rise of the Ronin's photo mode offers some wonderful shots
On the heels of Rise of the Ronin's PC launch, its director says there's a "significant" amount of Japanese Switch gamers: "I am closely watching how this will change with the release of Switch 2"
Stardew Valley Castle Village mod
Stardew Valley Expanded creator is building an "even more ambitious" mod with a whole new city and "dungeons inspired by The Legend of Zelda"
Dino Crisis 2 art showing a young woman and man back-to-back amid tall green grass, both with their weapons drawn
Dino Crisis gets a fresh trademark filing by Capcom, but it might not mean the 26-year-old survival horror franchise will get a new installment like fans expect
Cujo
Netflix is making a brand new adaptation of Cujo, the infamous Stephen King book about a killer dog