Dune: Awakening Announced

By Rollin Bishop

Funcom has officially announced Dune: Awakening during Gamescom's Opening Night Live. The new title is described as an open-world survival MMO that will allow players to explore the world of Arrakis on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC. While it's been known for years at this point that Funcom was working on some kind of open-world video game in the Dune franchise, this is the first time that it has been really, fully revealed.

According to the official announcement, Dune: Awakening takes inspiration from both the novels by Frank Herbert as well as Denis Villeneuve's Dune movie. The cinematic trailer, which you can check out below, showcases just how close the new video game hews to the movie's visual language:

"Funcom has been pushing boundaries in the MMO genre for 20 years," said Rui Casais, CEO of Funcom, as part of the announcement. "It's where our roots are. We built on that with Conan Exiles, our first big success in the survival space. With Dune: Awakening we're bridging the survival and MMO genres to create something truly unique and ambitious within a universe we're all so passionate about."

"Dune: Awakening truly promises to bring the world of Dune to life in an exciting new way," added Sam Rappaport, VP of Interactive Media at Legendary Entertainment. "We are thrilled to be creating this with a partner like Funcom, who is so adept at capturing the rich detail and wonder of cinematic worlds for the gaming audience."   

As noted above, Dune: Awakening is set to release for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. No definitive release date has been announced, but Funcom is already planning a Beta. You can check out all of our previous coverage of Funcom in general right here.

What do you think about what we have seen of Dune: Awakening so far? Are you looking forward to checking out the MMO for yourself when it releases? Let us know in the comments, or feel free to reach out and hit me up directly over on Twitter at @rollinbishop in order to talk about all things gaming!

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