How ‘RuneScape’ Studio Is Prepping a 25-Year-Old PC Franchise for Its First-Ever Console Release, Including Crossplay

The release of the latest chapter in the “RuneScape” franchise is fast approaching with the September launch of “Dragonwilds,” which will mark a turning point for the beloved PC franchise.

Currently available in Steam Early Access for PC players, the title is particularly notable because it will mark the first-ever “RuneScape” game to come to console devices in the MMORPG’s 25-year history.

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As porting to new platforms has become much easier with Unreal Engine 5, which is what “RuneScape” maker Jagex is using to build the title, there are key aspects the team has had to pay attention to when it comes to making a game that has a good “feel” on Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S consoles when it debuts Sept. 15, in addition to “RuneScape’s” longtime home on PCs.

“The development’s been straightforward, but there’s a lot of work that we have to do on the UX, the user experience, because while we’ve been developing with controller in mind, there is an expectation from a console player around the experience on a controller,” Jagex’s “RuneScape: Dragonwilds” creative director Rick Turek told Variety during an interview at Summer Game Fest last month. “There isn’t, I don’t believe, a best-in-class survival game on a controller that has really nailed it with the types of features.”

An example Turek gives is the Xbox-owned “Minecraft,” which is “quite simple, in terms of its control features, and it doesn’t have a lot of overlapping systems because it’s quite organic.” In comparison, the Jagex exec says “RuneScape: Dragonwilds” is “quite an interface-heavy game.”

“Which is really great for PC, but as soon as you start putting that on controller, a lot of the work has been less about trying to do the port to console, because we have Unreal — it’s more been about the user experience and how we make the controller feel great,” Turek said. “And ‘RuneScape,’ being traditionally PC, what that means if I’m a console player and if I’m getting the same experience out of it.”

According to Jagex, more than one million Early Access copies of “RuneScape: Dragonwilds” had been sold as of June. That engagement comes as Jagex has been promoting its “strategy to expand ‘RuneScape’ into a broader ecosystem of forever games and connected experiences, grounded in a renewed commitment to integrity and fair play,” including “the reduction of monetization mechanics.”

With this in mind, the U.K.-based developer Jagex is balancing courting longtime “RuneScape” players, as well as potential new fans with features like that feel-good controller aspect and promises of crossplay abilities.

“My general assumption is that there are lots of people who’ve touch ‘RuneScape’ in one way or another, but aren’t still playing the MMO,” Jagex product director Robert Galassi-Fox said. “So a lot of when we kicked off it was talking to people in early research to see how many people preferred playing on the [retro game controller] sticks. It’s not a small amount of people. So it was very important for us to stick the landing and part of what we were doing even in Alpha was being quite specific, as Rick said, about it feeling good on the controller first.”

Galassi-Fox added: “Us coming to PC made good sense in terms of the [Early Access] expression, but I’m more excited for this new audience and seeing what some of the expectations are. We want it to be equivalent, and the intent, and this hasn’t changed yet, is that there will be crossplay, so people will be able to play with each other.”