It’s been a year since the release of PlayStation 4 and we at Gaijin Entertainment are very proud that War Thunder was one of the launch titles for the system. Our game is more alive than ever with thousands of players duking it out on one cross-platform server. We thank all of our PS4-community for staying with us during this first year and want to provide some news on what’s going on in War Thunder right now.

Our users can always expect a steady amount of new content on the horizon, and these holidays won’t be any different. The main update that we’re currently working on is the Steel Generals expansion, which is going to add US tanks to War Thunder. Around 30 new vehicles will join the ground forces battles very soon, and players can expect a lot of iconic tanks such as Sherman, Chaffee, Patton and many others.

In the meantime, several War Thunder Advanced packs were added to PlayStation Store at the beginning of Decеmber, so I want to talk a little about our vision for premium content. The most important for us is to keep War Thunder a free game. You can progress to the top-tier of research tree for each country without spending anything, but you can speed things up a little now and then. It’s a competitive multiplayer experience, so providing any combat advantage to paying users is out of question.

With premium vehicles the idea is the same – they aren’t any better than regular planes and tanks in terms of combat performance, but provide increased rates for earned Research Points and Silver Lions in each battle. And this allows you to unlock other, regular vehicles, faster. Also, premium planes and tanks usually come with unique skins – a good example is a new Gustav Starter Pack. The plane bears the markings of Romanian Air Force, but other than that, it’s the same Messerschmitt Bf.109G-2 that is available in the game for free.

Another reason for spending money on premium vehicles is a collector’s interest. There are a lot of prototypes or rare machines – like Australian planes in RAF or goofy-looking XP-50 in US Air Force. Again, they may not be better in terms of combat efficiency that regular vehicles, but you can satisfy your urge to “collect them all” by spending something extra. So, another newcomer is Scout Starter Pack, which contains German light tank Pzkfw II Ausf. H. with unusual sailcloth roof and quite powerful 50-mm cannon.

And finally, Heavy Armour Advanced pack is sort of a Greatest Hits album: it includes most of the premium tanks that we released in the last six months and it’s a great gift for the avid War Thunder player over the coming holidays!