World of Tanks developer to publish Total War Arena

The publishing arm of the World of Tanks developer, Wargaming, is set to take the reins of Creative Assembly's still in-development, Total War: Arena. Although Sega will still have some say in the whole process, it was officially partnered with Wargaming Alliance to handle the majority of the heavy lifting.

The idea behind the move seems to be to generate extra interest in the Arena property. In a statement, Wargaming Alliance's head, Vladimir Makarychev, said that though Arena had strong interest in the community and a decent early access player base from the start, that this deal would take the game to new heights.

“Now, with the Wargaming Alliance partnership we are able to expand further by reaching out to their substantial subscriber-base and beyond,” he said (via PCG).

That's a key component of this deal it seems. While Sega will be able to leverage its publishing experience, Creative Assembly wants to tap into the many regular players of Wargaming's games. There are several mentions in the announcement of ‘gaining access' to that 100 million+ player base, so perhaps we'll see some form of concerted marketing effort aimed at existing World of Tanks, Planes and Warships players.

For now though we don't know when the game will release and indeed, this announcement also suggests it will be some time until it's all ready. It seems to be in good hands though and will presumably be released at some point in 2017.

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KitGuru Says: Arena looks like an interesting game and has quite a powerhouse of companies behind it now. It seems hard to imagine it not being at least a modest success at this point. 

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