Xbox One players are about to experience games on their consoles like never before. Get ready to tap into a virtual universe where the user's imagination becomes a reality.
Roblox announced on Wednesday, Jan. 27, that it is making its first jump to consoles by allowing users to download its gaming platform for Xbox One via Microsoft's Xbox Live for free.
CEO David Baszucki describes the popular kids platform Roblox as an "imagination platform," where gamers and creators come together and tap into their creativity.
"Roblox is all about creating an environment where you can imagine with your friends," Baszucki told Tech Times. "It's the place where the 3D immersive experiences are not just created by the community, but the 3D immersive experiences cover a wide range of things that tech-savvy users like to imagine and play with."
In fact, it's the largest user-generated online gaming platform, with more than 15 million games created by its growing community of more than 300,000 creators, according to comScore stats the company cites on its web page.
Roblox allows users to create adventures, play games, and role play with the community. Experiences on the platform include 3D multiplayer games and interactive adventures where the player can take on a new persona, such as exploring the world as a dinosaur, seeing space from the eyes of an astronaut, or even being a prisoner, as well as featuring first-person shooter games, racing games, etc.
"The mind-blowing part of having the community create these experiences is, just about anything you can imagine you can find on Roblox," Baszucki said. "You can find a simulation of a Civil War battle, or you can find an experience that's all about pretending you're a bird and you have to catch insects to survive. We marry the technology that creates the immersive experience while bringing friends together."
The platform is family-friendly, so parents don't have to worry about mature content. There is even a game where players act out that they're running a restaurant, reminiscent of my own childhood where I would make my family members pretend they were my customers as I took orders and made them eat make-believe food. Now these types of games can be enjoyed by the modern family, bringing imagination to life on computers, mobile devices and now on Xbox.
"Our vision has always been these 3D immersive experiences. We want them accessible in as many places as possible and the living room with a large screen and a game controller is a beautiful place for Roblox experiences," he said. "We're really trying to bring back the play in games. We want to use our games as a foundation for imaginative play."
Baszucki said the decision to launch on Xbox came after asking community members where they wanted to play. Since Roblox uses some of Microsoft's cloud technology and Windows is its biggest platform, this seemed like a natural fit.
Roblox users who already have an account will be able to use their exact same avatar when they log into Xbox, along with six brand-new Xbox avatars.
"Microsoft has been really cool with us in this vision that your avatar needs to go wherever you go instead of a separate Xbox avatar, and this is really important for our users to really get into who their character is and who their friends know they are."
Gamers will also have access to the same virtual currency, where items or upgrades purchased in games (which mirrors the freemium model for mobile games) will transfer over to the rest of the Roblox ecosystem.
With its launch on Xbox with 15 titles, gamers later will be able to play millions of games created, he said. Baszucki noted that soon after they will "start opening the flood gates" for even more of the content accessible from Xbox.
Not only will Xbox One gamers be able to role play, explore and compete in these games, but they will also be able to create their own titles that are released to the community. This is what makes Roblox so unique and attractive since gamers can actually make a living doing what they love — with the top ones earning up to $20,000 a month now, he said, which includes developers as young as 13 who can earn the funds to support their future college experience.
"Many of our developers are becoming very proficient, essentially professional game developers on the Roblox platform, and the top developers, they are starting to earn significant virtual currency," Baszucki said. "We have a program called Developer Exchange were they trade that currency back in for real U.S. dollars. We're really creating a new class of game developers."
Along with launching on Xbox, Bazucki said the company also is working with VR vendors to bring the gaming platform to virtual reality, although there are no formal announcements. "When you start to think about VR, which is the another way of both visualizing and connecting with 3D immersive content, you can see what an obvious platform it is for Roblox," he said.
Launching on PlayStation 4 and Apple TV is also within the company's vision, he said. The platform already is available for PC, Mac, iOS and Android.
Roblox for Xbox is rated E10+ for fantasy violence, and will require an Xbox Live Gold membership to play.
