ARK: Survival Evolved is on course to make it even easier to host private multiplayer sessions. Beginning with PS4, its developers Studio Wildcard have been working to allow rentable console servers.

Studio Wildcard’s ARK: Survival Evolved is its own phenomenom. An online survival game, its big differentiator is the presence of dinosaurs. It lives in Early Access at the moment but has a full retail release planned for August 29th on PC (Steam), Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

Until now, players who wanted to host a private server for console had to physically have a second console. That console would run the game as a server and allow all the other players to connect to it; an innovative if slightly inconvenient solution for private multiplayer sessions. Today’s news means that’s no longer necessary.

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Beginning with Nitrado and PS4, as of today, ARK will allow players to rent servers for their private sessions. Xbox One will follow suit in September, according to the company, with more providers due to offer the service in addition to Nitrado.

From Studio Wildcard:

Nitrado is the first server provider ready to offer the ARK private console dedicated servers, with other companies joining the party soon. The servers will be offered at a low monthly cost, with the goal of making them available to the widest group of players possible. Studio Wildcard has worked with the hosting companies to make the service available, with the costs going only to the server hosting companies.

Is 100 players not enough for your server? Then Studio Wildcard also announced “Cross Ark”, which will allow the clustering of these virtual console servers and should allow for easy switching between them.

A key feature offered is “Cross ARK”, which allows players to connect multiple custom private servers together to create a large cluster and jump seamlessly between different servers/worlds. All server settings can be adapted to the player’s preference by editing the settings through the web portal.

Players interested in the service can visit Nitrado, or learn more about the game here. ARK: Survival Evolved is available on Xbox One for $59.99.