Welcome to CITIES XL!

Monte Cristo is pleased to announce CITIES XL™ for Windows today. In this next-generation take on the city building genre, realism will be pushed to the limit with cities that are bigger, more realistic and more sophisticated than ever before. CITIES XL™ will expand upon all the features that make city builders fun and interesting, while also letting players take their game online, as they interact with others in a massive online environment.

CITIES XL™ allows gamers to develop cities on realistic 3D maps using an incredible collection of unique structures and monuments based on American, Asian and European-influenced architectural styles. The maps feature a variety of environments:  mountains, hills, canyons, beaches and islands, all set in different climates from tropical to desert, Mediterranean to temperate. Players must create the right combinations of social services, leisure activities, special events and other job opportunities within their cities in order to feed, clothe, employ and entertain their citizens. Be it planning and building a new zoo, public park, residential neighborhood or transit system - there's always a fresh and exciting challenge for would-be city managers and mayors in CITIES XL™.

“We believe that the level of detail and realism brought to CITIES XL™ answers the needs of city-builder fans,” said Jérôme Gastaldi, COO of Monte Cristo. “We believe fans of the genre will definitely enjoy CITIES XL™ and many of those fans have provided us with feedback on our development so far. We are really proud to have such a cool and proactive community.”

The game’s online features and services will allow players to create interconnected cities on virtual and persistent planets. Mayors can share and trade with one another, specialize their economy and team up with befriended cities to create sprawling metropolises. Life on the planet will be punctuated by events and competitions - a concert held in one town may, for example, be attended by visitors from other areas who can also enjoy a walk around the city to admire the urban creations of multiple players. By combining a fantastic single-player game with the social and multiplayer aspects of an MMO, CITIES XL™ will shape the future of the genre by offering more variety, bigger cities and multiple gameplay layers.

For more information about CITIES XL™, which will ship in 2009, please join the continuously growing community at www.citiesxl.com  

We're about to live a very exciting week !

You're the first ones to get the news: the game’s official title is CITIES XL™.

At first it sounded strange to us… But now that we've been using it internally for a few days CITIES XL™ replaced Cities Unlimited in our discussions faster than what we'd have thought.

We sincerely think we’re making the right choice as CITIES XL™ will be huge and, we want to allow people of different languages and cultures to understand and pronounce the title.

As a token appreciation for the time you've spent with us discussing the game, we decided to grant ALL current registered community members with the « Founder » title. It will be displayed next to your profile in the forums and, in essence, bear witness to your presence from the early beginnings.

We’ll make official the new name this week with a press release which should attract numerous new contributors to the forums. We’ll also update the website (you may find the website down for maintenance for a couple of hours). We’ll take this opportunity to update any reference to  Cities Unlimited to CITIES XL™ wherever we may find it (including in your posts), to avoid creating confusing between the two names for newcomers. We're relying on you to convey the message.

Stay tuned as we also have a huge surprise to accompany the website update !!!

See you soon, and long life to CITIES XL™!