Now Black Myth: Wukong’s director blames Series S for Xbox delays

videogameschronicle.com:

Black Myth: Wukong developer Game Science has blamed the Series S console for the game’s no-show on Xbox platforms, appearing to contradict a previous Microsoft statement.

The Chinese developer announced last summer that the Xbox version of the popular PC and PS5 action RPG had been pushed back due to internal quality concerns, after it was expected to release in tandem with other versions.

Several months later, a Microsoft statement heavily suggested a platform agreement with PlayStation was the cause for the continued delays, and denied it was due to due to “Xbox platform limitations that have been raised to us.”

Now, the game’s director has added further confusion to the situation, posting on the Chinese social network Weibo (translated by Resetera): “Everyone’s fighting power is so terrifying, but the only thing missing is the Xbox robe… It seems a bit wrong (but that 10G shared memory, without a few years of optimization experience, it really can’t be taken down)”.

The statement appears to reference Xbox Series S’s 10GB of RAM, which is lower than the Series X’s 16GB, and must be shared across the system’s OS and games.

It’s currently a mandatory requirement for developers to ensure that their games are compatible with both Series X and Series S in order to release them for Microsoft’s consoles. This has led some developers to argue that having to cater to Microsoft’s entry-level console limits the potential of current-gen games.

There’s been plenty of speculation regarding Wukong’s delayed Xbox release, with some questioning whether it may be related to difficulties in porting it to Series S, an issue that has affected some games in the past, including Baldur’s Gate 3.

However, publications, including Forbes, have previously reported that the delay was due to Sony striking an undisclosed console exclusivity deal for the game.

VGC has asked Microsoft for comment on this story.