Microsoft signs Micro Forte for online game

Microsoft has signed a first-party publishing agreement with Australian developer Micro Forte for an upcoming Xbox online game. At the game's foundation will be Micro Forte's BigWorld technology, which is an online engine and toolset that's designed to smoothly scale up to include many more players than is possible in current online games. While BigWorld's practical player limit won't be known until there's a final game to test, the number may be up to the millions, according to Micro Forte's estimates earlier this year, or at least hundreds of thousands, as Microsoft has specified.

A Microsoft representative declined to comment on the specifics of the Xbox game or to say whether it's related to Micro Forte's online action game, BigWorld: Citizen Zero , which was revealed earlier this year as an example of the BigWorld technology. We'll have more details as they become available.