Bohemia has announced that long in-development open-world shooter survival title, DayZ, will be receiving a full reboot on a brand new engine in just two weeks' time. This will be effectively, the second time that this has happened, if you count the move from the original ARMA II mod to the standalone version which Bohemia has been helming since 2013.
DayZ is a game that largely appears to have been passed by by the general gaming population. Although exceedingly popular in its day, H1Z1 swiftly took over as the new battle-royale-like game, though it too has now been supplanted by successors like PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and Fortnite quite spectacularly.
Still, it seems Bohemia hasn't given up on DayZ just yet, with the new engine marking not only a big upgrade over the original, but effectively a full reboot of the game on PC, as per lead producer Eugen Harton.
"We're releasing DayZ on a new engine in a couple of weeks on PC, and it's gonna be coming to Game Preview on Xbox this year," he told PCGamesN.
He's not too concerned about the new blood in the scene though, even if they are vastly more popular than DayZ ever was.
"The hardcore simulation we're working on is not gonna compete with PUBG. It's not gonna compete with Fortnite. I think we have a different customer. I'm pretty sure of that," he said.
He did admit that he doesn't see DayZ having the mainstream appeal it once had, but hoped that with a new engine and a fresh start, it might draw in players and some of the older streamers who once spent hours upon hours trawling around that Eastern European island.
