How World of Tanks Is Revolutionizing Xbox

One of the more interesting and unexpected occurrences at E3 this year was the surprise appearance of Wargaming CEO Victor Kislyi at Microsoft's press event. Kislyi announced the imminent arrival of Wargming's smash free-to-play hit World of Tanks on the Xbox 360, as a free download through Xbox Live. The [a]list daily caught up with Kislyi to ask him about this surprising announcement.

Why bring World of Tanks to the Xbox 360? "In North America and the UK, that's the way people play games," Kislyi said. "Microsoft and Sony combined have an installed user base of more than 100 million, and those are gamers. They're not checking email on Xbox or PlayStation. It's a culture. You have to come to them."

The result is an impressive AAA game that plays well on the Xbox 360 and has all the appeal of the PC versions. "The core game has all the depth and complexity that the PC version has," noted executive producer and creative director TJ Wagner. "It's running on the same server versions. The changes we made were all about playing it from ten feet away. Simplifying the UI, navigating it from the controllers, combining the tank upgrades into packages."

"Those are gamers. They're not checking email on Xbox or PlayStation"

Victor Kislyi

Kislyi also spoke about the acquisition of Gas Powered Games along with veteran designer Chris Taylor. "There was some money changing hands, but we said let's make something great and own the world with the next big thing," he said. "I think Chris Taylor plus Wargaming is a good match. We have all cool cards in our hands. We have finance, we have free-to-play wisdom, we have operations and infrastructure around the world, we have the legendary Chris Taylor. He can do big things with our resources... combined with our free-to-play knowledge I think we will rock."

Read more about Wargaming's plans for World of Tanks on the Xbox 360 on [a]list daily.