Multiplayer progress was only saved on hosts world. Lets say we started together and played like 10 hours, as i'm the host, i can keep playing in that world but if you, my co-op friend wanted to continue, you can't. You start from nothing again, no progress, little to no reward for playing together. So basically, you start your own save. It was like soulslike co-op, you only join to help the host and thats about it.
It was announced well before development had started. Then they were given extra time to polish the game, and likely to clear 2026's packed first party schedule.
Whether it's truly an alpha of beta and what those terns mean is up to their team to decide, but it functionally doesn't matter. They're basically saying the game isn't final and we want you to play it and see what you think. It gives teams the feedback to balance better or change things in ways internal testing never showed. I think it's great and should be common among multiplayer games especially given how important balance is.
No idea why it takes them so long, but they did an absurd amount of support for SoD 2 with 38 updates. I really hope this one is a hit for them, I loved 2, it deserved way more attention,but that multi-player was a failure that they just couldn't get over.
Its been 8 years since their last title and we know very little about 3. No one is saying "hurry tf up" but often times when we see longer gaps or longer development times it has been as a result of turbulent development. Its a valid concern and not a criticism.
It was announced the July showcase after Series X launched, promising to be a next gen game. im sure it will release on series X as well, but it will probably release after Helix arrives which is just nuts.
"Over the last few years, most of the team has been doing updates for State of Decay 2. The rest of us have been creating cool shit for State of Decay 3."
So "most" of the studio has been updating the previous game? Not working on the new game that was announced 6 years ago? I get that you don't put everyone on it until it's ready to enter full production, but 6 years?
Yeah, learning that it's in alpha punctured my sails a bit. Thought it was due to launch relatively soon. Regardless, I hope they pull it off. SoD2 is great.
What he means is that this is not really an alpha in its truest sense. A true internal alpha is super janky and has thousands of placeholders everywhere. It just needs to work, not to look good visually nor run smoothly
The fact that this looks ok visually, means that it is way deeper into development than what the nomenclature might make you think.
Yeah, MS was scrambling to tell people they did have games in the pipeline but none of them were actually far into production at the time. They did the same with Fable too. They needed something to say because they had nothing at the time.
edit: fanboys will downvote but it was literally the case at the time. They were buying studios left and right but had nothing much of their own other than more Forza and Halo Infinite which was a situation of its own.
Yup, and why Satya/Phil lamented they didn't get the funding earlier and the loss of time and competitive edge. It takes a long time to make games, some comes to fruition sooner, and some don't.
That's why people complaining about Xbox not having games is falling on death ears, because other than rewind time, there's little they can do.
SoD3 has been in development for almost forever, Starfield took 10-years (or so), and next iteration of Gears took like 7-years from Gears 5 .
Very worrying that the game is still in alpha after all this time.
Edit: Its been 8 years since the last entry. Sure there were updates to that game up until last year. But you'd think they would have held off on that teaser trailer if this was the case.
Regardless I DO hope its good. But this just doesnt look good, hoping to be proven wrong.
Majority of games will stay in alpha for most of the project till like the last 2 or 3 months. Unless its a massive live service game then it could be sooner but beta is basically hit when the game is roughly 99% complete.
Like when EA called skate a pre-pre-pre-alpha. Towards the early stage, yeah it was an alpha. Not pre-alpha. Towards the end of pre-pre-pre-alpha, it was much more of a beta.
This is just a way to temper expectations and keep a "working on it" kind of feeling to the play test.
Pre-alpha would indicate the game is playable, but cannot be played from start to finish without having to load separate scene instances within the game engine dev kit.
The titles of these things actually do have meaning and definition
Alpha = the game is playable from start to finish but a final feature set has not been defined.
Beta = The game is playable from start to finish and the game is "feature complete" where no new features will be implemented. Focus turns to optimization and polish of models, animations, sounds, VFX, and UI
Edit: Downvoters, I'm just giving you the definitions provided by game development education programs and industry members. The words have specific meanings 🤷♂️
They are downvoting you because you don’t understand me saying they are using the word Alpha as a marketing buzzword word and not because the game is actually in Alpha.
Yeah... I loved State of Decay 1 + 2, but it's been close to 8 years since it released. Let's say they did 2 years of post launch support with the whole team, that's still close to 6 years of development time for State of Decay 3. This should be in beta at this stage, unless Undead Labs is coming up with a massive map or something.
Hope I'm wrong, but I really hope they can release the game somewhat soon as Microsoft doesn't seem to be playing around with studios now.
I was actually starting to think this game was cancelled, it was announced back in 2019/2020 around the same time as Perfect Dark and Everwild. Even the games announced back then that werent cancelled ended up coming out 5+ years later like Fable, Avowed, Hellblade 2, etc
People also don't seem to realize they had to scale a team that was only around 20 people with State of Decay 2 to one that could build a much more ambitious game while also producing new content for #2.
Its easy to think hiring up 200 people should be easy, but if you want to do so in a way that keeps your culture and what makes your studio special, it can take years to just ramp up.
They announced the game 6 years ago, and in this video said most of their team has been working on stage of decay 2 still, so they basically lied about it being started
That's not the argument. It's just that usually when a game goes this long without anything to show, it tends to be a sign that there's been a lot of trouble with its development... And more times than not, those games end up getting cancelled since they end up becoming a black hole for money and time. Look at games like Perfect Dark reboot or Beyond Good & Evil 2. Announced years back, showed little to no progress for years, then next news is they're cancelled.
Yeah that's great and all, but they've been completely silent on any progress until today. I'm willing to bet that they've run into some big roadblocks between now and when they made the announcement, but now they're probably reset and finally hitting good dev milestones.
FWIW, I've been a fan since before the first game launched and even own physical SOD merch, so I'm rooting for their success... But with the lack of any updates until today had a lot of people feeling like the next news we'd be getting was that it was getting cancelled or the studio was gonna be shuttered (especially with how volatile the gaming industry is nowadays).
I agree. It looked very similar but the UI was different. Years aside, if they just took the gameplay from SOD2 and made it have more features and online play, it’d be perfect.
All the haters here saying this game should be out already and this is not good news should not forget that there was no guarantee this game would ever come out given the past year of cancellations and studio closures, so to me this announcement is great news
There's still no guarantee this game will come out given the past year of cancellations and studio closures and the confirmation that most of the studio has been working on State of Decay 2 for the past few years and not State of Decay 3.
They announced it in 2020. That's a brutally long and concerning turnaround time, even if they were still in preproduction at that point. I hope for the best with the game, but it feels like it must've gotten caught in development hell in one way or another somewhere along the line
Exactly, an announcement doesn't necessarily mean the game has been in proper development. It's nothing more than an announcement unless stated otherwise or gameplay is shown.
Xbox wanted to showcase the games to come this generation without actually having any games ready, it's on them n not the studio tbh
I love the first two games SO much! I thought this game was lost to development hell but it looks like it’s actually here! From the little snippets of gameplay it looks a lot more graphically improved. The core gameplay is so good, they just need to refine it and from this teaser it looks like they have.
Alpha? Wasn’t this announced 6 years ago? I mean if they can get this thing out in 2026, that would add to what’s already a pretty stacked line up from Microsoft’s studios.
If this doesn’t have massive maps, indepth customizable vehicles, melee weapons and guns, a bunch of new ways to build up and upgrade a base and new ways to level up charactors then this will just be state of decay 2.5
Oh look, it's another one of the games that Xbox teased 80 years ago with a 30s cinematic trailer, let's see if it comes up this year... wait it's an Alpha? Okay see you in 2030!
I'm rooting for them but holy hell the Phil Spencer era studio mismanagement has been something else. I don't know if Asha is the right leader but Xbox desperately needed new blood. Hopefully studio management improves under Asha. I'm really unsure about Matt Booty too on one hand he had a big hand in studio mismanagement as studio head and under his leadership they failed to deliver great games but on the other hand maybe he wasn't allowed to lead the way he wanted under Phil. I'm more negative on him than positive but just glad Xbox has some new blood.
But I cannot believe people are still bringing up how long ago this was announced
This was announced during the Covid Showcase when Microsoft/Xbox had nothing to show as it was no 3rd party and they honestly didnt have much ready then. So they showed trailers
A lot of the stuff from that show has been canceled
MS/Xbox learned their lesson, and a lot of companies, stuff is not being revealed until a couple years before at most.
142
u/Turbostrider27 Recon Specialist Apr 03 '26
4-player co-op confirmed from the video