The future of Metro - 4A Games reveal their plans for the series

Developer 4A Games (makers of the Metro series), have published a major studio update to celebrate what has been a milestone year for both the studio and the Metro series, and reveal their future plans for both Metro and some exciting new projects.

You can read the full update on the 4A Games website here but we wanted to share with you the main highlights for the Metro series.

Metro Exodus is coming to Xbox Series X / S and PlayStation5

"We’re currently hard at work on bringing Metro Exodus to Xbox Series X| S and PlayStation 5 next year. While we can’t share all the details just yet, you should expect major enhancements including faster frame rate, increased resolution, reduced loading times, and stunning Ray Tracing features made possible by the new hardware. The new consoles are amazing, and will allow us to deliver visual enhancements and performance only possible on state of the art PC hardware and RTX enabled cards - until now. 

We’re happy to confirm that these enhanced versions will also be made available as a free upgrade to all existing owners. That means if you already own Metro Exodus on Xbox One or PlayStation 4, whether digitally or on disc, you will be able to upgrade to this enhanced version on the next generation on consoles for free.

And if you’ve yet to pick up the game on Gen 8, you can do so safe in the knowledge you will get the enhanced version for free should you upgrade your console in the future.” 

Linux and Mac version of Metro Exodus are on their way

"Aside from these enhanced versions for Gen 9, we recently brought Metro Exodus to more players through Amazon’s ‘Luna’ streaming service; and we’re also working on dedicated Linux and Mac versions of the game. We’ll share more information about these closer to release.”

The Future of Metro

"It’s no secret that we have already started work on the next Metro game. Using everything we’ve learned from the last 15 years, we’ve set our sights even higher – the next title is being built for Gen 9 consoles and PC, with a complete overhaul of our engine and renderer to take advantage of the new power, storage, and hardware supported ray tracing afforded by the new consoles.

We’re not ready to share anything more, but we wanted to reassure our fans about a few important topics.

First – we’re committed to delivering a great story driven single player experience; this is what the Metro series is founded on. As a studio, we want to constantly push ourselves to create bigger and better games, but we also listen to what the fans are saying, and we know what’s important to you. We take our responsibly to the franchise seriously, and we think you’ll be excited our plans for the next chapter."

The Future of Metro

"At the same time, our partnership with Saber will allow us to explore something that has always been an ambition for 4A Games, but something we have never been able to commit to until now; a multiplayer experience in the Metro universe. 

As a small studio we have never been able to do justice to these ambitions, and our ideas have never made it beyond the prototype phase. But with Saber’s experience in online gaming, we are now actively exploring multiplayer concepts that will offer a new way to experience the world of Metro.

We know some of our fans have concerns whenever they hear multiplayer mentioned, so we wanted to tackle this topic head on and talk about some of goals and principles behind this early exploration -

Let’s start by saying, we hear your concerns. We’re not looking at multiplayer as a box-ticking exercise, or to jump on some trend or bandwagon. As creators, we want to explore a multiplayer experience that makes complete sense in the Metro universe.

We’re also committed to ensuring that whatever we do, it’s not to the detriment of our single-player ambitions. We’ll need a dedicated team focused solely on the online component, and this is what our new partnership with Saber can bring; years of expertise, technology and know-how to help us realise our ambitions.

"Additionally, a reminder that it’s still early days – none of the thoughts above mean that the next Metro game will be multiplayer only; or that the next game will have single and multi-player in the same package. We are still figuring things out, but know that we are absolutely committed to more single-player, story driven experiences in the Metro universe that our fans have come to know and love.”

There’s more on the 4A Games blog, including a look back at the history of the studio, plans on further interaction with the community, and other news. We hope you’re as excited about the future of Metro as we are! It’s in good hands"