Firaxis has had a pretty busy last few years. Back in 2016, Firaxis launched not one, but two eagerly-anticipated follow-ups to some of the best strategy games ever made, with bothXCOM 2andCivilization 6launching in the same year. Since then, Firaxis has continued to support both games long after their initial launch, withXCOM 2receiving several expansions, andCivilization 6still receiving leader and scenario updatesto this day. Throw last year’sMarvel’s Midnight Sunson top of it all, and Firaxis has been pretty non-stop for a while. And there are no signs of slowing down just yet, withCivilization 7well on the way.
Announced back in February of this year,Civilization 7is currently in its early stages of developmentover at Firaxis. While no official news has come out in the following months, it seems likely that Firaxis is progressing well on the game, and fans might be hoping for some kind of update soon. Though looking back at previous Firaxis development periods might suggest the opposite, as info will likely not come until 2024 at the earliest.
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Why Fans Will Be Waiting Some Time For Civilization 7
TheCivilizationfranchise is very unique in that most of its announcements have been delivered in a fairly nonchalant manner. In the modern video game industry, there’s usually quite a bit of fanfare behind each video game announcement, especially when it’s from such a beloved series likeCivilization. Most new franchise entries tend to wait until a big event likeE3, Summer Game Fest, or the Game Awardsto unveil that they’re in the works, but that’s not often been the case with Firaxis’Civilizationseries, which can make predictingCivilization 7’s marketing strategy a bit tricky.
The firstCivilizationgame Firaxis worked on wasCivilization 3. This title was first announced in an interview all the way back in April 2000, and it came out in October 2001, just a year and half later. Admittedly,Civilization 3had already been in development for about 6 months at the time of its announcement, and video game development back in 2000 was much less demanding than it is today. In December 2003, Firaxis announced that it had just begun work onCivilization 4, and the game was out by October 2005, again taking around two years of development.
Civilization 5marked a bit of a shift in marketing for the franchise, with it being the first title to receive a proper reveal and announcement trailer during Firaxis' time with the series.Civilization 5was announced in February 2010, and came out in the September of the same year, though it apparently had a lengthy development period of around four years.Civilization 6received a proper announcement as well, adopting a similar marketing strategy of getting revealed early in 2016, and being released toward the end of the same year.
Civilization 7returned to the series' strange marketing roots with its own reveal, being announced unceremoniously by a simple post on the officialCivilizationTwitter page. This time, no release date has been given, and it’s presumed thatCivilization 7is still in its early stages of development. WithCivilization 5taking four years to develop, it’s likely thatCivilization 7could still be a ways off. This number only gets bigger when the last few years of Firaxis' development time is factored in, with presumably most of the studio’s resources of the last few years going towardsMarvel’s Midnight Sunsand its DLC. Unfortunately, it seems extremely unlikely that fans will get to see anything fromCivilization 7anytime soon, with the first possible appearance being next year at the very earliest.
