Ascend: New Gods To Be Free-To-Play on Xbox LIVE‏

Signal Studios has announced that its upcoming action RPG Ascend: New Gods will be free-to-play on Xbox LIVE.

Ascend: New Gods is a third-person action RPG experience that offers a variety of innovative new features such as multi-platform connectivity, a unique parallel multiplayer system and support for the newly-announced Xbox SmartGlass technology.

“We want to create a game that delivers an experience beyond what people generally expect from free-to-play titles,” says D.R. Albright, President and Creative Director for Signal Studios. “Our business model is integrated into the gameplay in a very elegant way. There’s no begging or distracting pop-ups. Players can get through Ascend without spending a dime, but if they want to purchase items to augment their experience, we make it easy for them to do so. If they choose not to, that’s fine too.”

In Ascend:New Gods, players will be able to spend “souls”, the currency of the game, to acquire new and unique items, abilities, upgrades, and character customizations. Souls can be earned in-game or purchased using Microsoft Points through Xbox Live.

“Ascend leverages our proprietary dynamic content system to deliver on-the-fly updates,” says Brett Gow, Executive Producer for Ascend. “By taking advantage of this system, we’ll be able to quickly make adjustments to the game to meet the demands of both the single-player story and the multi-player experience. This will allow us to push new content and gameplay updates directly to players without the wait normally associated with console title updates.”

Ascend: New Gods is expected for release in early 2013.