H1Z1 to launch in Early Access form in January

H1Z1, Sony Online Entertainment's take on the survival crafting sandbox genre, will be available for brave early testers in January.

H1Z1's first public build will become available on January 15, SoE president John Smedley has announced.

This first build is not for the faint of heart, as Smedley stressed it will be very much a work in progress.

"Is it going to be a finished game? Absolutely not. If that's what you're expecting, DO NOT BUY EARLY ACCESS," he wrote on Reddit.

"The goal here is to let you in early and help us mold it into a game you want to be a part of for quite a long time."

The early access build features 64,000 km² of terrain, but SoE plans " to grow it right away", apparently, "and over time create our virtual version of the US post-apocalypse". That's an area of about 9.8 million km², in case you were wondering. Wow.

H1Z1 will be available in two packages during early access. The basic $20 pack grants early access only, while a more expensive one will allow free access to game modes otherwise only intermittently available to regular players. SoE will provide more details on this closer to launch.

Interestingly, Smedley took the time to address a question that has been asked about H1Z1 since it was announced - how will it compete with DayZ?

"Is H1Z1 going to be better than Day Z day 1? No it won't," he wrote.

"We'll get asked that question a lot and I wanted to be up front about it. We're not as feature rich and they have a lot of really cool stuff we just don't have yet. That being said, we're also a different game. We're an MMO and our goals are to create a large scale world that gives you the incredible feeling of being a survivor in a zombie apocalypse."

The full Reddit post linked above also includes discussion of why it took longer to get H1Z1 to a playable state than initially announced.

H1Z1 is coming to PS4 in addition to PC, but we don't expect to see an early access version on consoles.

Thanks, Massively.