Smite will be the first mainstream MOBA to head to consoles.
The MOBA genre, dominated by heavy hitters such as League of Legends, DOTA 2 and more recently, Heroes of The Storm, has until now been a PC-only affair. However, up-and-comer Smite is aiming to change that, by porting it’s third-person MOBA to consoles, starting with the Xbox One.
To sign up for the beta, simply head over to Smite‘s Xbox page and fill out the form. There’s no word on when the beta will start, but it shouldn’t be too much longer now.
In other Smite news, The Smite World Championships start this weekend, from January 9-11, where eight teams will fight over the ever-increasing $2.5 million USD prize pool. Smite is using a partially crowd-funded prize pool for its championship, in a similar fashion to DOTA 2‘s Compendium.
When we talked to Hi-Rez back at PAX Australia, Chief Operating Officer, Todd Harris told us that “Because of the third person viewpoint, it really lends itself much more to consoles than the other popular MOBAS,” adding that the game has several newbie-friendly features, such as a system that auto-buys items, and auto-levels skills, in order to appeal to the console audience, who are typically a lot more casual than PC gamers.
The game certainly feels like it would be right at home with a controller in hand, so we’ll have to see how this one pans out. For now, Smite is only planned to release on the Xbox One, though more platforms may come in the future.
Source: Hi-Rez Studios
