Official Ultima Forever Trailer, Release Platforms Announced

Earlier today, Mythic Entertainment released the big news about Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar that we’ve been waiting for…and happily, it included a release window for the game:

We want to thank all of you for the time you sacrifice in checking our page and awaiting news regarding Ultima Forever’s release. We are extremely honored to have such amazing fans.
We are very proud to inform you that Ultima Forever will be released this spring!

Please accept our thanks and enjoy the new trailer:

As Dungy noted on the main Ultima Codex site earlier this afternoon, the trailer “starts with a brief voiceover by the gypsy, beckoning the player to Britannia. It gives a great overview of the graphics, but is perhaps a little heavy on combat. If you look closely, you can see glimpses of the conversation system and a conversation with Lady British. There are also a few glimpses of gameplay from within towns and socializing with other players. Welcome back to Britannia everyone!

Finally, there is the ominous warning, ‘The Black Weep is rising.’ Could this explain the recent change to the Ultima Forever Facebook page? And perhaps offer a clue to the game’s antagonist?”

As well, trailer announced the launch platform for the game:

This is an interesting change. We had heard, previously, that the iPad was the launch platform for the game, and I will admit that I’ve been taking every legitimate opportunity I have been presented with to needle people at Mythic about an iPhone version as well. I don’t say that to take credit for anything; I’m just happy to see that now Ultima Forever will in fact be coming to other Apple handhelds as well.

However, people asked for clarifications about these and other platforms, and Mythic obliged them with a response:

There have been a lot of questions regarding platform support and we would like to clarify our intentions. We had been planning a simultaneous launch on both PC/mobile and went into Alpha on both systems. Mobile scored higher in testing and so we doubled our efforts on iOS to expedite release. After the iOS launch, we will focus our efforts on bringing the game to other platforms. We will confirm exact dates for Android and other platform releases later this year.

This, in turn, confirms another rumour about Ultima Forever; we first speculated that an Android version might be in the works back in August.

So…no beta announcement as yet, but still some exciting news, and an idea of when it will see its “first wave” release.

5 Responses to "Official Ultima Forever Trailer, Release Platforms Announced"

Sanctimonia says:

February 13, 2013 at 10:50 pm

Looks like what we’ve (or I, anyway) expected, and it is a shame it mostly focuses on combat. If you look at the YouTube stats, out of 307 views and 75 ratings 53% approve and 47% disapprove. Will be interesting to see if that changes significantly as it gets more views and ratings. At least it’s a hell of a step up from Lords of Ultima or whatever that strategy game was called.

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Kilthan says:

February 14, 2013 at 1:35 pm

Here’s my problem: Releasing on one system to start with is dangerous, especially for something that already has many fans concerned. Apple does not have the lion’s share of the mobile market, Android does. This ‘lets release for Apple First and maybe everything else later’ could very well lead to it NEVER being released for anything else.

Say it doesn’t take off on iOS, does any of us really believe EA will continue to put money and man power into finishing the other OS versions if the iOS version flops, since they seem to be putting their stakes on it being their biggest seller. My girlfriend, who has never played an Ultima but was going to use this as her first experience with the series picked up right away that if it doesn’t do well enough, we may never see it, as we have PCs and Android devices.

So, here’s to hoping you Apple owners make it profitable, otherwise the rest of us may never get to do more than just dream about a new Ultima.

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1. WtF Dragon says:
  
  February 14, 2013 at 9:19 pm
  
  Android is available on more devices overall, but that’s a very fragmented market. Android devices vary wildly in size and performance, not to mention Android version. Apple, on the other hand, has a very narrow hardware platform, and is hyper-aggressive in forcing older-generation hardware into premature obsolescence. The end result is that while yes, Android does have a larger install base and a larger user base in terms of pure numbers, Apple has a larger base of hardware (and the users for same) that is performant enough to support games like Ultima Forever, which I gather is a bit on the demanding side as far as performance requirements go. Plus, it’s well-documented that Apple users tend to spend more money on games than Android users.
  
  So releasing for Apple first, if mobile in general is the target market (or a large portion of the target market) makes sense…especially for a small team at a medium-sized studio working on a threadbare budget. Ditto if the goal is making money.
  
  PC would have been a good release platform as well, of course, and a PC release will happen; the PC version already exists (it was used for the alpha), and likely just needs some additional polish. Porting the game to Android after that may be a relatively easy proposition or a rather difficult one…it depends on a variety of factors. But I’m pretty sure we will see it in due course.
  
  Reply
Ultima Forever News Roundup: Post-Trailer Edition : Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar says:

February 18, 2013 at 9:12 pm

[…] the release of the Ultima Forever trailer last week, online media outlets focused on gaming and on mobile devices have been abuzz with commentary on […]

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Ultima Forever: News Coverage Concerning the Trailer says:

February 18, 2013 at 9:17 pm

[…] the release of the Ultima Forever trailer last week, online media outlets focused on gaming and on mobile devices have been abuzz with commentary on […]

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