Today is monday as of the writing and publishing of this and perhaps, it was a good day for Studio Wildcard to actually just get over with some bad news regarding the Ark franchise and this include both the sequel and original game.

Unfortunately, Wildcard confirmed that they needed to delay Ark 2 as they found opportunities to polish the current progression of development of the game so far and mainly they are still in the learning phase with Unreal Engine 5 and they want every opportunity of an optimized game as possible.

Yes, I agree with the notion that it is a good delayed BUT well-developed game but then… Ark 1 or the original game.

Wildcard also announced Ark: Survival Ascended, a “next-generation remaster” of Survival Evolved, which uses Unreal Engine 5 that will be released on Playstation 5, PC and Xbox Series S/X in August 2023.

The bad news are two actually, the remaster WILL NOT BE OFFERED AS A FREE upgrade for the original Ark game because of Unreal Engine 5 and ALSO the multiplayer server of the original game will be closed by Ark: Survival Ascended launch.

Players that have the capacity to host independently Ark servers can still do so after the closure of the official servers and most of the saves will be transferables.

Ark: Survival Ascended will be sold at $39.99 and bulges will vary depending on the desired platform.

Update - 4/10/2023: Studio Wildcard backtracks on Xbox-only package

Via an Steam Ark main page entry:

"We appreciate your patience as we digested the feedback and consulted with our partners to revise our upcoming plans. As always, we’re very grateful to have such a passionate player base, and we hear and understand your concerns. We've decided to make some changes and provide additional information as to why we’re taking this approach, so please bear with us as we address some points.

First things first, we are scrapping the ARK Respawned Bundle. Our intention behind this was to provide a package where you essentially got two products for the price of one. In hindsight, not the best move. Our bad; we recognize how combining ARK Survival Ascended with ARK 2 and requiring further DLC upgrades wasn’t optimal, especially since you wouldn’t be able to judge ARK 2 as no gameplay or content would be available yet. Here are our new plans:

ARK: Survival Ascended will now be a standalone package released on every platform (PC Windows/Steam, Xbox Series S/X, and PlayStation 5) at $59.99. The package will include the following pieces of content built-in (not sold separately), with each remastered and altered for the next-generation:
-The Island (Released at Launch)
-Survival of the Fittest: The Island & Scorched Earth map variants (Released at Launch)
-Scorched Earth (Released at Launch)
-Aberration (Released by Q4 2023)
-Extinction (Released by Q1 2024)
-Genesis Part 1 (Released by Q1 2024)
-Genesis Part 2 (Released by Q2 2024)
-All the community-created maps are also to be released over time in 2024 (Fjordur, Ragnarok, The Center, Lost Island, Valguero, Crystal Isles)."

Unfortunately, changes does not include a rollback on the shutdown of Ark orignal game's servers because of "Many of the changes we’re making in ARK: Survival Ascended will touch a lot of aspects of the game; it’ll invalidate save data, some mods may not be functional, some things may not play the same way as they did before, and we didn’t want to change that experience for those who prefer it or are unable to upgrade.".

Wildcard promises a final content update in time for the game's 8th aniversary this next June.