Xbox announced a public demo of Ark 2 for gamescom 2024, but then took it back

After almost a year and a half of silence from the developers from Studio Wildcard, the multiplayer dinosaur survival simulator Ark 2 was supposed to show up at gamescom 2024 with a public demo, but that was not the case.

Image source: Studio Wildcard

Let’s remember that last week Microsoft announced that it would bring more than 50 games to gamescom 2024, including from third-party developers. The list of projects for personal viewing at the Xbox stand included Ark 2.

As noted by the PC Gamer portal, since the original publication, the Xbox Wire editors have removed mention of Ark 2 from the list of public demos from the Xbox stand at gamescom 2024.

«Editor’s note: “Ark 2 was originally listed as a playable demo at the Xbox booth – the mention was made in error and has now been removed,” reads the explanation below the main text.

Neither Studio Wildcard nor Grove Street Games (Ark: Survival Ascended), which is helping with the development of Ark 2, have commented on the situation or spoken at all about the game since last spring.

At the end of March 2023, Studio Wildcard announced the postponement of Ark 2 Early Access to the end of 2024. Following this, the supporting studio Digital Domain stated that the game would be released only in the spring of 2025 – the developers denied this.

Ark 2 is being created for PC (Steam, Microsoft Store), Xbox Series X and S, as well as Game Pass. They promise a huge world, parkour and free climbing, a combat system in the spirit of Souls, graphics on Unreal Engine 5 and cross-platform modding.