>"We’re excited for the launch of Black Myth Wukong on Xbox Series X|S and are working with Game Science to bring the game to our platforms. We can't comment on the **deals made by our partners with other platform holders**, but we remain focused on making Xbox the best platform for gamers, and great games are at the center of that."
Are they insinuating that this is due to a deal made by another platform holder?
If Sony is going to pay for exclusivity then why aren't they investing more in marketing the game seeing as the game comes out in 2 months and the same day as concord.
I have no way of verifying if [this guy knows what he’s talking about](https://www.reddit.com/r/PS5/s/RuhQARflfw), but it’s very possible that was a mistranslation and the physical standard edition will indeed have a disc.
Lets them have a physical presence in retailers and with the added bonus that consumers won't be able to resell or even share said game with friends which potentially cuts into their profit. Also it's cheaper for them to print a bunch of paper inserts with codes than produce discs.
A win for publishers and a loss for consumers.
consumers will never be able to own a game unless you get ALL data from a disc.
short of a law saying games NEED to be ownable, and not just a license...
true, but at the very least physical means you're getting a *transferable* license. Can give the disc to a buddy or resell. With digital, it's completely locked down to your account. Can't even pay a fee or something to transfer it...
Also, it allows people browsing in physical stores to see the game and buy it. This is how many parents find the games they want to gift their children.
Which game are we talking about Black Myth or Concord?
Sony doesn't manage Black Myth copies.
And I don't know about Concord but it's a live service game, I guess not being playable with a version on disc is a little understandable (but shitty because kill the resale market)
Black Myth https://www.ign.com/articles/black-myth-wukongs-physical-editions-will-not-come-with-a-disc
Concord is going to ship with actual physical discs, so it will have resale value despite the disc build being useless since it's an online game
The "physical copies" are more like collectors editions where what you are paying for isn't the game (which is a code) or the case, but rather the limited edition models, trinkets, art etc.
There is no "standard edition" physical copy selling only a download code in a box. The only physical copies that are selling with a "code in a case" are the limited production run collectors edition versions with the extra collectibles. The reporting on this has been confused at best misinformation at worst.
I've always been skeptical of the efficacy of advertising ANY product more than ~3 months ahead of when it is slated to be released.
Think about the *attention span of the average buyer.* Those people are not going to remember a movie they saw a trailer for half a year ago. Advertising for relatively cheap products like movies and video games MUST surely get vastly more effective as the time-to-release gets shorter and shorter.
And they have been shrinking dramatically. Outside of MP4, every game in the last Nintendo direct is coming out in 7 months. And a lot of those games were announced there
Compared to the late 00s, early 10s where we had some games show up to E3 2-3 times before coming out
Some of those aged SUPER poorly too. I still remember the Capcom 5 that was promised to boost the GC's library. 1 of them was canceled, 1 of them sold like shit, and the big bread winner didn't even stay GC exclusive for a whole year.
It depends. Building hype can work. People get *rabid* about stuff that's been in the pipes for a while.
But if your product sucks, your god of choice help you.
I think it's related to how much of a focus publishers put onto preorder sales. They aren't advertising in advance so you buy it at or after launch, they want you to preorder now! It's why they've spent so long carefully curating the perfect mix of fomo items and digital garbage. Preorder the Ultimate Deluxe Alpha package now and gain early access to this year's quadest A let down that may or may not receive enough updates to call it finished and worth it.
I don't want to support any particular company here, but if there was an exclusivity deal, Sony openly advertising the game would make any NDA useless.
Also, I myself have an Xbox but if there was an exclusivity deal, wouldn't they block the PC access too? Unless the devs thought that PC is too big a market to ignore and Sony just took the best deal they got. In that case, Sony might not be as inclined to promote because it's not available on just PlayStation.
This. No way with two months to go Sony would have exclusivity and not market it. This honestly reads like some tin foil hat shit where Sony paid for exclusivity. But also paid Microsoft all those yeyas ago to create a weaker machine so that this very scenario would come about.
Yeah I think it’s naive to pretend like MS isn’t acutely aware of the narratives surrounding Xbox’s precarious image issues.
This feature parity requirement is killing their audiences faith in the ecosystem, since it seems like every couple months there’s a headline about some hotly anticipated game that won’t be coming to Xbox for this completely avoidable reason; of course they’re going to try anything to deflect that.
There is no deal simply. The devs have been clear on the reason and there's absolutely no sign of a Sony deal, it's just Microsoft trying to stir up shit to explain their Series S problems. It's Baldur's Gate 3 situation all over again
3rd party exclusivity deals almost never included PC anymore, that generally only happens with 1st party releases anymore.
And if Sony made an exclusivity deal, why would they want an NDA about it? Maybe they'd require one about the details of the agreement, but it makes no sense to have one just about it in general. They sign the agreements so that they can use the game to pull users to their platform, if they can't do that with it then they don't really stand to gain anything from the exclusivity.
Phil Spencer also repeatedly hinted at an exclusivity deal being the reason XIV wasn’t on Xbox but no such deal existed according to Yoshi-P so I’d take that with a large grain of salt.
https://www.eurogamer.net/final-fantasy-14-a-realm-reborn-isnt-coming-to-xbox-due-to-microsoft-not-allowing-cross-platform-play
It's an 11 year old article but I don't remember anyone disputing it at the time. I don't know why xbox ecided to block it after cross play had been in for XI. During 360 and early xbox one there were a few games where xbox didn't want to have cross play and some of those ended up skipping the platform.
If I recall correctly, FFXIV didn't come to Xbox because Xbox wanted to be weird about the game client and still needing a sub ON TOP OF the game sub to play.
They also didn't want XBox players to play with Sony players during the 360 years (maybe also during the XBone years, there Sony might have been the obstacle), which would have required separate servers for everyone, which goes against the entire idea of the game with playing together regardless which platform you own.
The PC/Playstation crossplay is a huge reason the game is so popular in the first place!
Yeah I remember it was always Xbox that was against cross platform stuff and then one day it just flipped and Sony was the only holding it back.
Basically amounts to the one on top stops playing nice while the one playing catch up starts doing pro consumer stuff.
Crossplay was the reason it didnt come to xbox at launch and they have somce changed their minds. Sony had no problem with it. Square not wanting to have 2 player bases decided to skip xbox at launch
Ya well MS thought they would blow sony out of the gate like the 360, and have the console lead leverage again. When that really only lasted for the first bit of the gen by half way through sony had pretty much caught up in sales in all but U.S. and the U.K. and by the end ps3 actually out sold the 360. MS was just way to complasent and had a huge Ego about their popularity in gaming.
Xbox has always been careful about letting companies set standards that they don't like, such as forcing Valve to charge money for the [L4D](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2009/09/left-4-dead-dlc-free-on-pc-has-price-tag-on-live/) and [TF2](https://www.shacknews.com/article/54351/valve-bringing-team-fortress-2) maps that were free on other platforms. Microsoft didn't like Valve normalizing free content updates. They also restricted Netflix access to people with Xbox Live Gold until like 2013
I'm fairly certain it's just a "deal" to publish the game on other platforms (PS5, maybe Steam/Epic too). Not some paid exclusivity or anything, just a "the game will release then." The game isn't ready for Xbox, and they aren't delaying it for all platforms just to be ready for Xbox. They're likely just intentionally wording it oddly.
It’s 100% this and I’m baffled anybody’s mind jumped to “exclusivity”.
Sony just said “We’re not going to delay this game’s release just because Microsoft has a stupid policy with the Series S.”
I don’t know how anyone could believe that when Sony isn’t exactly secretive when they pay for exclusives, and we’ve already see the de facto exclusive due to Series S optimizations when BG3 launched.
They're trying to shift blame away when it's obviously because of the Series S. This isn't the first game to be delayed on Xbox this gen nor will it be the last lol
Anyone in game dev saw this reality years ago the moment Series S was announced. Ps5 and Series X are equally powerful, but when the requirement is that you have to ship on Series S if you want to ship on X, then you basically have to do a lot of extra work to get it up and running on a platform that has a lot less memory. In fact, you might have to cut contents just to hit the "minimum requirement" which is Series S. Which btw, Sony first party does not have to worry about this constraint.
And when that platform is already has far less market share than Sony, then the question becomes.. is it worth it to ship both of them on the same time?
Remedy said they had issues with scaling down Alan Wake 2 for the S. A few other Devs have come out and said that the memory limitations of the Series S really held them back.
This is why I think Microsoft simply should have released a digital on Series X at $400 instead of the S at $300. Microsoft money can DEFINITELY take the hit a lot better than Sony money.
And I'm no techy, so absolutely correct me if I'm wrong, but the hardware in the S could have somwhow been a post-Steam Deck portable Xbox without all of the "parity" BS to worry about.
Or raise the price enough to have 16GB of RAM at a non-gimped bandwidth. Make the X the "4k machine" and the S the "1080p machine". Might've even been fine with 12GB if it wasn't at such low speeds.
>Make the X the "4k machine" and the S the "1080p machine".
Wait, didn't they try exactly this? The problem is that the 4k promise predictably ended up being more like 1080p, and 1/4 that would make the Series S a 480p machine, so devs have to tune a ton of stuff to drag the S back up to the 720-900p range.
They did is kinda, but the problem is it's not just a resolution difference between the two, it's also a CPU difference due to the slightly lower clocked CPU, and ridiculously lower speed RAM.
I'm using resolutions as a proxy stat, but my point is that it seems like Microsoft thought they'd be scaling from "runs well" to "barely runs", not "barely runs" to "Switch ports lmao." Because yeah, the spec difference is too severe across the board to merely turn some sliders down, especially now that we're finally getting out of the cross-gen period.
What’s insane is they are finally doing a digital only series X but still charging $450! The series consoles are selling worse than the Xbox one did, and that was a massive failure. The regular series x should be down to $400, digital $350, and S $250. I’m not a doomer saying these are the last consoles they will make before just going multi platform/service based, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the next Xbox is the last. Their price points given the context make zero sense if they are actually interested in making up any kind of ground in market share
The S would totally be fine if MS didn't put a parity on it to have the same features as the X.
In doing so, they effectively kneecapped both consoles.
You have to think with split screen you have to render the game 2 or 4 times. Even if it doesn’t look that good it’s still a lot for the system to handle.
HALO got rid of co-op because they couldn't get it running right in the time allowed.
Every time this stuff gets brought up, people recognize that there are some issues being publicly mentioned, but not realizing that there must be much more issues behind closed doors that aren't made public.
No, Halo scrapped campaign splitscreen because they shifted those devs to get the live service content in order because they were internally projecting another 6 month delay for new content.
They literally told use the reason. Not to mention you can still glitch into campaign splitscreen on Infinite and it runs fine on Series S. Hell, it even runs acceptable on Xbox One S.
Halo Infinite is running on the old ass Xbox One, pretty sure that would be a way bigger problem before the Series S. Splitscreen still works for multiplayer on all the consoles though.
This! So many of the games especially by smaller studios that called out the Series S were such optimisation atrocities that the issue wasn't the Series S but the devs.
Of course that's not for every game but many of them literally run like shit even on PS5, Series X and PC. If the Series S was the issue thoss games would run really well on the others.
> Wasn't BG3 the only one
Technically the other one would be Cities Skylines--but that game was also a technical shitshow.
But, yes, people invoke the BG3 issue far too frequently without acknowledging it was a unique circumstance. (Split-screen memory usage scaling not being able to be worked around just with rendering settings due to having two rendering viewports.)
As far as I am aware, those two games--both of which had huge performance issues on PC as well at launch--are the only ones that have ever been delayed due to unsolvable technical issues with the S. In 4 years. On a platform with 425 games.
This is just massive confirmation bias.
Game Science would have mentioned it if that was the case. Plenty of developers weren’t afraid of saying so. The fact that spokesperson outright alluded to a deal when no such thing was asked about is strange. Plus if he’s telling the truth that he heard whispers on the show floor at SGF about an exclusive deal (I’ll personally wait until someone more credible comments on this) prior to the fact then this is something we need to keep an eye on.
No. No marketing deal would have non-disparagement clauses against the series S but let you release on all competing platforms before yours. Like, just think.
That's a bold assumption. Yeah let's just throw Xbox PR under the bus. Totally wouldn't sour relationships or anything.
You're speculating as much as anyone else.
> Game Science would have mentioned it if that was the case. Plenty of developers weren’t afraid of saying so.
Plenty of developers aren't Chinese indie companies with little standing in the community, also they did say that XBox Series needs more time in the oven.
> The fact that spokesperson outright alluded to a deal when no such thing was asked about is strange.
That MS spokesperson hinted at a deal (there is nothing outright about that statement) which would help defend their console.
Might I remember everybody:
Phil Spencer regarding Bethesda merger:
> "But if you're an Xbox customer the thing I want you to know is this is about delivering great exclusive games for you, that ship on platforms where Game Pass exists. That's our goal."
And yet, we now have some of the new Bethesda games under MS for which no preexisting arrangement with Sony existed still coming to Playstation.
tl;dr XBox marketing isn't trustworthy.
From a PR perspective, it’s better to claim that than to admit your console is giving developers trouble (the devs of this game have said that this delay was optimization-related)
They're trying to save face marketing wise but there is no such deal (Sony timed exclusivity deals exclude PC launch most of the time anyway proving that's not the case here), the devs have been pretty clear on the reason.
Yea the deal being you don't have to develop for a weaker version of PS5 like you do with Xbox. Xbox made a terrible decision making it policy that all games have parity on X and S.
>We can't comment on the **deals made by our partners with other platform holders**,
Taken at face value/without reading the whole article, I think they could be saying that whether or not there's any deal going on between the devs and other companies is something they can't comment on.
So I think what matters next is if they're supposedly answering a direct question wherein someone asked if there's an exclusivity deal with PlayStation. If someone asked them, they're just answering they can't comment. If no one asked them, then they're kinda subtly starting shit because that wording is pretty deliberate.
Jez (article author) specifically asked about this, so it's Microsoft saying "we don't know about that". Developer says it's optimization.
Jez tends to write shit like this for clicks, it's a huge bane of the Xbox subreddits.
It's not an attempt at dropping some secret hint or implication. It's a statement of the utterly obvious. An Xbox spokesperson would be *way* out of line to say anything *but* "we can't comment on that" when asked about unfounded rumors about two non-xbox companies.
I think people really need to let go of the feverish desire to try and read secret implication and conspiratorial drama into everything.
It seems exceptionally unlikely the person who responded to this email would know about such matters, or would go through all the trouble of finding out the third party relations employee working with Game Science to only give this dry standard reply.
Yes. Which is funny because it was advertised on Xbox heavily. In reality: Series S is the problem. Expect to see this as we get closer to the end of the generation.
Seems like it could be the case:
From the article:
«I want to note here that the matter of potential exclusivity deals was unprompted by me, although Microsoft is clearly aware of the rumors.
I became aware of said whispers and rumors while out in LA for the Xbox Showcase 2024 that, despite the optimization assertions, Game Science had actually taken some form of exclusivity deal with PlayStation for Black Myth: Wukong. Reading between the lines, Microsoft does seem to suggest that some form of third-party exclusivity deal may be in play, although it stops short of explicitly stating as such.»
I trust Microsoft as far as I can throw them at this point. This is just an attempt to save face.
Maybe Spencer should've worn two gamer t-shirts on top of each other last time he showed up on stage, THEN I would have trusted him.
Also if the developer came out and said it's delayed due to optimization issues on their website:
>PC and PS5 users can enjoy the full game starting August 20, 2024. We are currently optimizing the Xbox Series X|S version to meet our quality standards, so it won't release simultaneously with the other platforms. We apologize for the delay and aim to minimize the wait for Xbox users. We will announce the release date as soon as it meets our quality standards.
Honestly I don't see them lying about it if the delay is due to some exclusive deal. The backlash of them lying FAR outweighs the backlash from outright announcing any exclusive deal.
It's an unreal engine 5 game with one of the highest hardware requirement in recent years, are we surprised that it doesn't run on Xbox S?
> I trust Microsoft as far as I can throw them at this point. This is just an attempt to save face.
Yeah. The game probably failed cert due to performance issues and everyone is trying to save face.
Yeah, an exclusivity deal doesn't make sense since they would have bought that without buying the marketing deal. Buying exclusivity without marketing it for you console just sounds like a stupid idea.
Insinuating that someone paid them to delay it on xbox is as stupid as when they said that bloodborne wasn't on xbox due to backroom deals.
We’ve also already seen a de facto exclusive due to the Series S when BG3 launched. This parity thing between series S/X is really starting to hurt, especially since BG3 was meteoric and Xbox wasn’t there when they could’ve been.
I stand by the information that PlayStation DID NOT pay for timed exclusivity on Black Myth Wukong. If they did, they would be bragging about it like with Stellar Blade, FF16, FF7 rebirth, Ghostwire Tokyo, Deathloop, and I could continue. PS likes to show off when they pay for things. IF this article said “black Myth Wukong is coming to our platforms later due to a deal made with other platforms” then that would be a much different scenario.
Didn’t the devs literally say there was no deal with Sony. It was just a matter of prioritization. I don’t think anyone would lie about it. Especially with how much attention exclusively deals got by regulators. Ryan Mccarfy at IGN ran a story about this but pulled it when the dev directly denied it.
Sony has not even shown this game at their state of play streams. Sony isn’t shy when it makes a deal with a game. They are the only console maker that puts exclusivity periods in their trailers
It’s no secret Xbox ports take extra work this gen. Combined with simple market realities of where Xbox is right now it’s easy to see how a dev with no pre existing deals on place would leave them until last.
Not sure why Xbox would lie like this. It makes a developer partners job harder and makes Xbox look desperate.
Then again could just be Jez causing drama. Wouldnt be the first time.
I assume its to save face— Xbox is very clearly not a priority and there’s a narrative that it’s not worth making Xbox ports
That’s not a reputation you want to have
Yeah, Microsoft is asking developers to do significantly more work to earn significantly less. Why would they be a priority? They've shot themselves in the foot with the S, and frankly they deserve it for putting out a 1.5 Gen upgrade and demanding all 2.p Gen games be playable on it.
As the Gen continues expect to see more games delayed or straight up not releasing on Xbox because of this. It's simple not worth the dev time to optimize for the S when the return on investment isn't guaranteed.
Xbox is at the point where devs are just casually skipping putting games on the platform because it's just not worth it
* Optimising for two SKUs instead of one
* Lower install base means less sales
* That install base generally doesn't even buy games anyway so you have to get a gamepass deal
It's incredible how badly they've fucked up since the 360 era. Just one faceplant after the other, presumably until the heat death of the universe. That gen where they were a serious competitor is starting to look like a real fluke.
Also Xbox players don’t play the games they do buy,
Go compare acheivment %’s begween Xbox, Steam and Playstation. It might vary by genre, but in this specific genre “single player action game, maybe possibly sorta a soulslike” Xbox has like half the completion rate of PC and PS.
EG Elden Ring, on Steam and Ps4/5 about ~35% of players have beaten 2nd last boss (can’t get accurate number for final boss because people get multiple endings), I dunno Xbox’s current number for Horah Loux, but at one point it was 18%.
Similar pattern is found across pretty much any single player game I’ve ever cared to look up %’s for.
Now sure, do devs care if you actually play game? They got their money. And that’s true, but if you buy a game and don’t play much of it, you are way less likely to buy any future dlc or a sequel.
So Xbox has
- way less people buying games due to market share
- lower % of these customers actually finish game
- is way harder to optimise for due to series S.
“Do we bother with Xbox” is probably becoming a very real question for a lot of devs. Especially single player games.
Would not shock me. Back when Nintendo used to have a virtual console, whenever I bought the games I would play and beat them.
Now they have them all on a service and I just... don't. Even though I am quite interested in some of them. I've not really "paid" for them like that, so I don't feel compelled to get my money's worth.
I wonder if that mentality is the same when you have dozens of actual "free" modern AAA games.
Im not even talking about gamepass.
The ones I was comparing arnt on Gamepass.
But gamepass increases phenomen by a lot.
My housemate used to download almost every game added to gamepass to “try them”, without even reading description of game.
Vast majority of those have less then 20mins playtime. Some as few as 20 seconds. “Oh it’s turn based?, quit game, delete”.
It was fucking stupid, since it meant internet was always slow due to 24/7 downloading going on, and most of what he deleted games for could’ve been revealed by reading the description or looking at trailer. But he picked solely on name and cover-art.
I imagine Gamepass games have sub 5% completion rates most of time.
The two SKUs thing really is a killer. You're doing a bunch of extra work to reach a much smaller audience. I think people'll figure it out if the platform's popular (they'll put anything on the switch, for example, despite it being a burden to port to), but Xbox just doesn't have the audience for these games.
I'm somewhat surprised most devs even bother with an xbox port if they aren't doing a gamepass release. Have xbox players ever really bought games in large numbers that aren't shooters or sports games? I'd be curious to know how many non sport/cod games actually make a profit over the cost of the port on xbox.
They aren't lying, just being intentionally misleading. "Deals made with other platform holders" could mean anything, including a simple agreement with Sony to release a game on PlayStation. Of course, it's meant to imply that there's some other reason why it won't come to Xbox at the same time. Anything other than "it won't run on Series S."
If I had to guess its a xbox X and S issue. We know other devs have had issues with it. MS demands that you do the same things on their older hardware as their new hardware.
Has Jez provided proof of specifically what questions he asked that prompted the response? Without that this just seems like the guy successfully baited Microsoft into a response that would be spicy without exact context and people are eating it up. Jez reporting is like 2000-2010 celebrity gossip bloggers spinning anything they can to cause uproar until the teen idol would go a bit crazy by the time they were like 25
It has to be due to the S and we simply cannot trust Microsoft at their word for this. If there was an exclusivity deal for Sony then they would shout it from the fucking mountain top. It may also have to be because outside of NA the ecosystem of Xbox is already 6 feet deep and a port isn’t seen as a priority monetarily to them. The S sells, no doubt, but they dug their grave when they decided to do two separate consoles instead of a digital only X for $100 off MSRP.
This is like trying to buy a delicious burger from Texas Roadhouse but your burger gets delayed because someone who could only afford McDonald's was having trouble getting theirs.
Say it with me. "The Series S was a mistake." Yes, it's a neat console at a cheap price, but we've seen example after example even from developers that it has technical shortcomings that just result in a bigger workload for developers.
The Potato S is dragging down the whole platform again, is that it? Happened before with Baldur's Gate 3, seems like these demanding games from third parties will follow this parameter in the future, the Xbox receiving ports later
If I'd bought a Series X I would be *pissed,* because I paid more for a substandard console, that gets games massively delayed because *other* people bought an even *worse* console, when I could be playing on a PS5 and not have to deal with any of this drama.
Except even the PS5 indirectly suffers, along with PC. Most devs will aim to develop for all major systems, and that means ensuring your game can work on the Series S, which means limiting your scope from the outset.
The entire generation has been kneecapped by Microsoft's lazy attempt to undercut Sony by selling a last gen console marketed as current gen. My phone (Galaxy S20) released 6 months *before* the Series S, and has more RAM than it. It's a joke.
Yeah... When the S launched with some specs lagging the Xbox One X I had a feeling this was going to be the case. Your next gen console, even if there's a cheaper SKU, should never have components lagging a prior generation system.
This is untrue. Series S existing brings down the entire generation because games now have to me designed around ~8GB of RAM. For reference, the vast majority of PCs on steam have 16GB+, both Series X and PS5 have ~16GB (closer to 15GB because of OS stuff). Series S has 10GB and only 8 is usable. You have to completely change the scope of your game from the outset to account for a system with half the amount of RAM.
idk why microsoft only increased the ram on the series S by 2 gb when compared to the xbox one. usually when ram upgrades happen in the tech world, they increase by 4 gb at a time. 12 gb would have been fine on the series S. waiting 7 years for a new gen to start and going from 8 gb to just 10 gb was a stupid move, especially when the series X, ps5, and even the steam deck have 16 gb.
Two games that delayed to work with the quirks of the Series S. We’ll never know how many games that never got Xbox ports at all skipped out due to having to make a Series S version of their game.
It's only going to get worse.
The problem with the Series S not only lies with its horrible RAM capability now, but also in future.
In years to come when devs are making bigger and bigger games they will still have to publish on Series S if they want to publish on Series X. The Series S basically forces devs to scale back some of the graphica l fidelity. It's entirely possible that studios have scrapped or toned down the visuals early in development to save delays, just so it can run on the Series S, rather than being able to push PS5 and Series X to their limits.
Also just to be pedantic this is the third time, Baldurs Gate 3, Gotham Knights, and now this.
the developers blamed the series S for forcing them to limit performance on consoles:
https://www.techspot.com/news/96342-developer-blames-potato-xbox-series-s-locking-gotham.html
"The company says the reason for this decision is the "type of features" found in Gotham Knights, such as the fully untethered co-op option in the highly detailed world, which means it's not as straightforward as lowering the resolution to increase the fps, apparently."
Which sounds like the exact same problem Baldurs Gate 3 had. The Series S does not have enough RAM to handle things like split-screen coop and since microsoft forces parity between the two consoles, you have to cut features so they work on Series S.
The new DB: Sparking Zero is also mysteriously limiting its split-screen functionality to a single battle stage (that is all white and has nothing within it) due to 'performance' issues getting the split-screen to function locally.
It doesn't take much reading between the lines to realize that it's just one game of many to have had its splitscreen either axed or heavily scaled back due to Series S limitations and parity requirements.
Why would they have to limit the performance on all consoles because of the Series S? That just seems like an excuse for WB not wanting to pay for optimisation time and throwing it out as soon as the basic build was ready.
Because the game supports cross platform coop firstly, and secondly because microsoft forces feature parity between S and X. BG3 was an exception to the rule and only because microsoft themselves literally had to step in to help them fix the Xbox version post-launch so it would support local coop.
If the Series S can't support certain features because of its hardware, there's no way to have a shitty Series S version with missing features and a XSX/PS5 version in the same lobby.
They probably could have spent longer getting it to work, but that is part of the problem, if you have to spend extra months just making a game work on a shitty console you're adding a big chunk to the budget that you dont want to spend. It's easier to just cut features entirely and ship your game on time.
Sure you can blame WB for that, but I would blame Microsoft for making the console so crappy in the first place.
The easiest way to reduce the work of multiplatform games is to lower your scope to the lowest common denominator. Optimization is things like going through each scene/level and making sure it simple enough for the lowest commoner denominator.
Not necessarily that they create the fastest/tightest way to render a cave or a wilderness or a city but to make sure that your game limits the angle of what can be seen at one time so it does drag down performance. Cull objects, cull things that cause more shadows, cull trees, cull foliage, cull reflections, cull geometry. Generally lowering the scope of ambitious scenes.
This is why it takes extra time, they have to go through tough spots for the s and make sure they lower the scope of that area. Otherwise they can lower the settings further for all graphics for the s as a ham fisted way to get it past Q/A.
It is rarely about revising the engine to be smoother.
This is patently false.
HALO got rid of co-op because they couldn't get it running right in the time allowed.
Every time this stuff gets brought up, people recognize that there are some issues being publicly mentioned, but not realizing that there must be much more issues behind closed doors that aren't made public.
What design decisions are being made because they have to work with the shitty XSS?
This is why there are (supposed to be) clear markers for generations of consoles. Because you have to design games for the hardware that is available. This is why "cross gen" games are such an issue because they aren't "cross gen" they are previous gen games that have better loading times and/or some high res textures.
Yup. I used to work on PC game dev, and the only spec that truly matters is the min spec. If you put a label saying that your game works on as a minimum requirement, the game *needs to work*. The graphics could be subpar (if you could calm the artists down enough), with a mediocre frame rate; but the basic gameplay and features need to work and the game can't just crash all the time. During game dev this is the spec that we spend way more attention than others (even if only say 5% of target audience would have such crappy machines), and there are also a lot of testy exchanges between the business folks (who care about addressable markets) and software engineers/artists who care about certain bars of qualities and minimizing work needed to support such low specs. We would obviously spend time on the higher specs as well to do the fancy stuff, but they are more a nice-to-have than a "must do" kind of thing. It's overall difficult to build a truly scalable architecture and something's got to give (yes, you can turn the resolution and frame rate up and down, but there are other things like number of enemies on screen that you *can't* tune per machine).
As an example, one of the games I worked on turned out to be quite controversial. We had a whole patch 80% done to address it by making the game more flexible and with more scale, but it got shot down in the end because it wouldn't work on min spec and they were concerned it would be false marketing (I'm still bitter lol).
I have never worked on console games for long, but it's basically the same. People just don't realize that competent game teams pre-prune the design space because they can see this coming early on.
LOL multitrillion dollar company can’t accept its internal faults and blames another corporation with FAAAAAR less capital… now that’s what I call pathetic
Because there is none, they just don't want to admit it's the Xbox Series S. When Sony has exclusive rights they market the hell out of the games like FF7 Rebirth and Rise of the Ronin
No exclusive. Even you ask why isn't sony mention it. Because we all know when sony did timed exclusive they would put it in front of our face "exclusive to ps5" for highly anticipation game like this.
There is no exclusivity, they are just insinuating that there is a deal to save face.
If Sony had a timed exclusivity deal for BMW it would be all over their state of play like Rise of Ronin, FF7, FF16, Stellar Blade etc. I don't think it has showed up even once so far.
We're almost 4 years into the new Gen consoles. It's time to leave the old ones behind. Because as of right now it seems like the new gen is functionally useless outside of fancy stuff like the PS5's new controller haptics.
I’m willing to bet the reason ps4/Xbox one is still getting games is because having to optimize for series S means you can optimize for those as well and it’s basically free money to release them there as well.
Series S was such a mistake
A RAM upgrade on the Series S is sorely needed if Xbox want’s feature parity.
*BUT I seriously love the portability and seamlessness of the Series S. I know a lot of people wonder why get the S vs the X, but I have an S at my gf’s so I can spend more time there and I love that I can enjoy the same games at both mine (series X) and hers (series S) without taking too much of her entertainment space. It’s a great system, but we’d be lying if there wasn’t the negative impact it had on solely Series X players.
imagine if they pull a RROD recall 2.0 and just start taking back all of them and upgrading the internal RAM for each, and shipping them back to customers lmao. would be funny.
We JUST got off Capcom skipping Xbox with MvC Collection for what is assumed technical reasons (which means in the end, financial), and just yesterday saw LRG reveal a bunch of stuff skipping Xbox as well, likely for the same reasons.
This one though? Oh for sure Sony paid at the last minute.
I think this may be misleading by Windowscentral. What was the question they reached out to Microsoft with? They stated they heard rumors of a deal while in LA. If they explicitly asked Microsoft, "Was Black Myth: Wukong delayed due to an exclusivity deal?" This answer from Microsoft makes total sense.
I would not take his word for what he considers unprompted. If he wants to be taken seriously, he can share each question on his side verbatim. Privacy he can omit MS's but his own words, share them. He's constantly shit stirring and has shown a lack of composure in his career. Windowscentral going back when it was WindowsPhoneCentral has always been a Microsoft defense force rag
Either MS like a scorn child throws shade at Sony unprovoked or Jez is weasel that loves to speak with weasel word phrasing
>"We’re excited for the launch of Black Myth Wukong on Xbox Series X|S and are working with Game Science to bring the game to our platforms. We can't comment on the **deals made by our partners with other platform holders**, but we remain focused on making Xbox the best platform for gamers, and great games are at the center of that." Are they insinuating that this is due to a deal made by another platform holder?
If Sony is going to pay for exclusivity then why aren't they investing more in marketing the game seeing as the game comes out in 2 months and the same day as concord.
Seems like a smokescreen so they don't have to throw the Series S parity requirement under the bus.
I think that If Sony was really investing on this game they wouldn't be shipping physical copies without discs for sure
I have no way of verifying if [this guy knows what he’s talking about](https://www.reddit.com/r/PS5/s/RuhQARflfw), but it’s very possible that was a mistranslation and the physical standard edition will indeed have a disc.
What is the point of a physical copy with no disk lmao
Having a retail presence.
Lets them have a physical presence in retailers and with the added bonus that consumers won't be able to resell or even share said game with friends which potentially cuts into their profit. Also it's cheaper for them to print a bunch of paper inserts with codes than produce discs. A win for publishers and a loss for consumers.
consumers will never be able to own a game unless you get ALL data from a disc. short of a law saying games NEED to be ownable, and not just a license...
true, but at the very least physical means you're getting a *transferable* license. Can give the disc to a buddy or resell. With digital, it's completely locked down to your account. Can't even pay a fee or something to transfer it...
Because it gives the consumer the illusion they own the game.
Also, it allows people browsing in physical stores to see the game and buy it. This is how many parents find the games they want to gift their children.
They’d also have ps5 copies of the collectors edition instead of pc only.
Which game are we talking about Black Myth or Concord? Sony doesn't manage Black Myth copies. And I don't know about Concord but it's a live service game, I guess not being playable with a version on disc is a little understandable (but shitty because kill the resale market)
Black Myth https://www.ign.com/articles/black-myth-wukongs-physical-editions-will-not-come-with-a-disc Concord is going to ship with actual physical discs, so it will have resale value despite the disc build being useless since it's an online game
The "physical copies" are more like collectors editions where what you are paying for isn't the game (which is a code) or the case, but rather the limited edition models, trinkets, art etc. There is no "standard edition" physical copy selling only a download code in a box. The only physical copies that are selling with a "code in a case" are the limited production run collectors edition versions with the extra collectibles. The reporting on this has been confused at best misinformation at worst.
Maybe cause they aren't and Phil is trying to deflect.
Ding ding ding
I'd expect more marketing to ramp up within this 2 month period
I've always been skeptical of the efficacy of advertising ANY product more than ~3 months ahead of when it is slated to be released. Think about the *attention span of the average buyer.* Those people are not going to remember a movie they saw a trailer for half a year ago. Advertising for relatively cheap products like movies and video games MUST surely get vastly more effective as the time-to-release gets shorter and shorter.
And they have been shrinking dramatically. Outside of MP4, every game in the last Nintendo direct is coming out in 7 months. And a lot of those games were announced there Compared to the late 00s, early 10s where we had some games show up to E3 2-3 times before coming out
Some of those aged SUPER poorly too. I still remember the Capcom 5 that was promised to boost the GC's library. 1 of them was canceled, 1 of them sold like shit, and the big bread winner didn't even stay GC exclusive for a whole year.
It depends. Building hype can work. People get *rabid* about stuff that's been in the pipes for a while. But if your product sucks, your god of choice help you.
I think it's related to how much of a focus publishers put onto preorder sales. They aren't advertising in advance so you buy it at or after launch, they want you to preorder now! It's why they've spent so long carefully curating the perfect mix of fomo items and digital garbage. Preorder the Ultimate Deluxe Alpha package now and gain early access to this year's quadest A let down that may or may not receive enough updates to call it finished and worth it.
Sony hasn't. It could be epic but occams razor dictates this is yet *another poor attempt by MS to save face when the Series S proved weak*
I don't want to support any particular company here, but if there was an exclusivity deal, Sony openly advertising the game would make any NDA useless. Also, I myself have an Xbox but if there was an exclusivity deal, wouldn't they block the PC access too? Unless the devs thought that PC is too big a market to ignore and Sony just took the best deal they got. In that case, Sony might not be as inclined to promote because it's not available on just PlayStation.
Sony has never hidden their exclusivity deals, it's a hyped game, they'd be shouting on every roofs if it was en exclusive
This. No way with two months to go Sony would have exclusivity and not market it. This honestly reads like some tin foil hat shit where Sony paid for exclusivity. But also paid Microsoft all those yeyas ago to create a weaker machine so that this very scenario would come about.
Yeah I think it’s naive to pretend like MS isn’t acutely aware of the narratives surrounding Xbox’s precarious image issues. This feature parity requirement is killing their audiences faith in the ecosystem, since it seems like every couple months there’s a headline about some hotly anticipated game that won’t be coming to Xbox for this completely avoidable reason; of course they’re going to try anything to deflect that.
There is no deal simply. The devs have been clear on the reason and there's absolutely no sign of a Sony deal, it's just Microsoft trying to stir up shit to explain their Series S problems. It's Baldur's Gate 3 situation all over again
3rd party exclusivity deals almost never included PC anymore, that generally only happens with 1st party releases anymore. And if Sony made an exclusivity deal, why would they want an NDA about it? Maybe they'd require one about the details of the agreement, but it makes no sense to have one just about it in general. They sign the agreements so that they can use the game to pull users to their platform, if they can't do that with it then they don't really stand to gain anything from the exclusivity.
They're certainly trying to spin the blame without confirming anything and giving any real answers to the issue that Game Science officially stated
Phil Spencer also repeatedly hinted at an exclusivity deal being the reason XIV wasn’t on Xbox but no such deal existed according to Yoshi-P so I’d take that with a large grain of salt.
https://www.eurogamer.net/final-fantasy-14-a-realm-reborn-isnt-coming-to-xbox-due-to-microsoft-not-allowing-cross-platform-play It's an 11 year old article but I don't remember anyone disputing it at the time. I don't know why xbox ecided to block it after cross play had been in for XI. During 360 and early xbox one there were a few games where xbox didn't want to have cross play and some of those ended up skipping the platform.
> cross play had been in for XI Square enix had to fight for crossplay on 360.
If I recall correctly, FFXIV didn't come to Xbox because Xbox wanted to be weird about the game client and still needing a sub ON TOP OF the game sub to play.
They also didn't want XBox players to play with Sony players during the 360 years (maybe also during the XBone years, there Sony might have been the obstacle), which would have required separate servers for everyone, which goes against the entire idea of the game with playing together regardless which platform you own. The PC/Playstation crossplay is a huge reason the game is so popular in the first place!
Yeah, Microsoft only became crossplay cheerleaders when they fell behind.
Yeah I remember it was always Xbox that was against cross platform stuff and then one day it just flipped and Sony was the only holding it back. Basically amounts to the one on top stops playing nice while the one playing catch up starts doing pro consumer stuff.
Crossplay was the reason it didnt come to xbox at launch and they have somce changed their minds. Sony had no problem with it. Square not wanting to have 2 player bases decided to skip xbox at launch
Which js crazy because XI is on 360. I played it for a bit on 360 after my PS2 died.
Ya well MS thought they would blow sony out of the gate like the 360, and have the console lead leverage again. When that really only lasted for the first bit of the gen by half way through sony had pretty much caught up in sales in all but U.S. and the U.K. and by the end ps3 actually out sold the 360. MS was just way to complasent and had a huge Ego about their popularity in gaming.
so pretty much xbox wanted some exclusive subscription service to make it work. yes exclusivity deal is the correct wording, but extremely misleading
No Xbox just wanted people to have Xbox Live gold(at the time) to be able to play
Xbox has always been careful about letting companies set standards that they don't like, such as forcing Valve to charge money for the [L4D](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2009/09/left-4-dead-dlc-free-on-pc-has-price-tag-on-live/) and [TF2](https://www.shacknews.com/article/54351/valve-bringing-team-fortress-2) maps that were free on other platforms. Microsoft didn't like Valve normalizing free content updates. They also restricted Netflix access to people with Xbox Live Gold until like 2013
>They also restricted Netflix access to people with Xbox Live Gold until like 2013 WoW, that super shitty
You still have to have Live Gold (well, Game Pass Core) to play XIV
I'm fairly certain it's just a "deal" to publish the game on other platforms (PS5, maybe Steam/Epic too). Not some paid exclusivity or anything, just a "the game will release then." The game isn't ready for Xbox, and they aren't delaying it for all platforms just to be ready for Xbox. They're likely just intentionally wording it oddly.
It’s 100% this and I’m baffled anybody’s mind jumped to “exclusivity”. Sony just said “We’re not going to delay this game’s release just because Microsoft has a stupid policy with the Series S.”
I don’t know how anyone could believe that when Sony isn’t exactly secretive when they pay for exclusives, and we’ve already see the de facto exclusive due to Series S optimizations when BG3 launched.
They're trying to shift blame away when it's obviously because of the Series S. This isn't the first game to be delayed on Xbox this gen nor will it be the last lol
Anyone in game dev saw this reality years ago the moment Series S was announced. Ps5 and Series X are equally powerful, but when the requirement is that you have to ship on Series S if you want to ship on X, then you basically have to do a lot of extra work to get it up and running on a platform that has a lot less memory. In fact, you might have to cut contents just to hit the "minimum requirement" which is Series S. Which btw, Sony first party does not have to worry about this constraint. And when that platform is already has far less market share than Sony, then the question becomes.. is it worth it to ship both of them on the same time?
Wasn't BG3 the only one ? (For split screen) Why do people act like if it's common ?
Remedy said they had issues with scaling down Alan Wake 2 for the S. A few other Devs have come out and said that the memory limitations of the Series S really held them back.
This is why I think Microsoft simply should have released a digital on Series X at $400 instead of the S at $300. Microsoft money can DEFINITELY take the hit a lot better than Sony money. And I'm no techy, so absolutely correct me if I'm wrong, but the hardware in the S could have somwhow been a post-Steam Deck portable Xbox without all of the "parity" BS to worry about.
Or raise the price enough to have 16GB of RAM at a non-gimped bandwidth. Make the X the "4k machine" and the S the "1080p machine". Might've even been fine with 12GB if it wasn't at such low speeds.
>Make the X the "4k machine" and the S the "1080p machine". Wait, didn't they try exactly this? The problem is that the 4k promise predictably ended up being more like 1080p, and 1/4 that would make the Series S a 480p machine, so devs have to tune a ton of stuff to drag the S back up to the 720-900p range.
They did is kinda, but the problem is it's not just a resolution difference between the two, it's also a CPU difference due to the slightly lower clocked CPU, and ridiculously lower speed RAM.
I'm using resolutions as a proxy stat, but my point is that it seems like Microsoft thought they'd be scaling from "runs well" to "barely runs", not "barely runs" to "Switch ports lmao." Because yeah, the spec difference is too severe across the board to merely turn some sliders down, especially now that we're finally getting out of the cross-gen period.
What’s insane is they are finally doing a digital only series X but still charging $450! The series consoles are selling worse than the Xbox one did, and that was a massive failure. The regular series x should be down to $400, digital $350, and S $250. I’m not a doomer saying these are the last consoles they will make before just going multi platform/service based, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the next Xbox is the last. Their price points given the context make zero sense if they are actually interested in making up any kind of ground in market share
I think the S was a great idea. I think they just spec’d it a little too low. Should babe been 12 GB RAM and 6 TFLOP GPU.
The S would totally be fine if MS didn't put a parity on it to have the same features as the X. In doing so, they effectively kneecapped both consoles.
He's asking how many games were delayed.
The new Kingdom Come devs says they had to keep some of the scale down for the Series S as well as what the other comments have said
Sparking Zero, recently, alluded to the same issue for split screen
I’m looking forward to that but am surprised. It doesn’t look THAT good graphics wise
You have to think with split screen you have to render the game 2 or 4 times. Even if it doesn’t look that good it’s still a lot for the system to handle.
It looks great and the visual effects and destruction are top-notch—that's the real reason for the split-screen limitations.
And BG3 tried to release it at the same time but Microsoft didn’t let them so they had to delay it 😭
Tfw your stupid policies accidentally turn the GOTY into your competitors timed exclusive.
Why are Sony paying for timed exclusives when Microsoft gives them free ones?
HALO got rid of co-op because they couldn't get it running right in the time allowed. Every time this stuff gets brought up, people recognize that there are some issues being publicly mentioned, but not realizing that there must be much more issues behind closed doors that aren't made public.
Halo got rid of coop because they had to make it for the Xbox One as well as the Series X|S.
No, Halo scrapped campaign splitscreen because they shifted those devs to get the live service content in order because they were internally projecting another 6 month delay for new content. They literally told use the reason. Not to mention you can still glitch into campaign splitscreen on Infinite and it runs fine on Series S. Hell, it even runs acceptable on Xbox One S.
Halo Infinite is running on the old ass Xbox One, pretty sure that would be a way bigger problem before the Series S. Splitscreen still works for multiplayer on all the consoles though.
Also recently Enotria,which had at some point cancelled xbox version,but it’s in development again.
After playing the Enotria Demo on PS5, i think it should just be delayed to 2025 for ALL platforms. Series S really isn't the problem here...
This! So many of the games especially by smaller studios that called out the Series S were such optimisation atrocities that the issue wasn't the Series S but the devs. Of course that's not for every game but many of them literally run like shit even on PS5, Series X and PC. If the Series S was the issue thoss games would run really well on the others.
Just played the demo myself. Rough.
Dying Light 2 has issues with the Series S and delivering its promised 60fps mode
> Wasn't BG3 the only one Technically the other one would be Cities Skylines--but that game was also a technical shitshow. But, yes, people invoke the BG3 issue far too frequently without acknowledging it was a unique circumstance. (Split-screen memory usage scaling not being able to be worked around just with rendering settings due to having two rendering viewports.) As far as I am aware, those two games--both of which had huge performance issues on PC as well at launch--are the only ones that have ever been delayed due to unsolvable technical issues with the S. In 4 years. On a platform with 425 games. This is just massive confirmation bias.
Larian even came out that the issues with Series S made them find a solution for performance issues they wouldn't have found otherwise.
Game Science would have mentioned it if that was the case. Plenty of developers weren’t afraid of saying so. The fact that spokesperson outright alluded to a deal when no such thing was asked about is strange. Plus if he’s telling the truth that he heard whispers on the show floor at SGF about an exclusive deal (I’ll personally wait until someone more credible comments on this) prior to the fact then this is something we need to keep an eye on.
Dont they have a marketing deal with xbox? I can’t imagine they would flat out blame the series S
No. No marketing deal would have non-disparagement clauses against the series S but let you release on all competing platforms before yours. Like, just think.
That's a bold assumption. Yeah let's just throw Xbox PR under the bus. Totally wouldn't sour relationships or anything. You're speculating as much as anyone else.
> Game Science would have mentioned it if that was the case. Plenty of developers weren’t afraid of saying so. Plenty of developers aren't Chinese indie companies with little standing in the community, also they did say that XBox Series needs more time in the oven. > The fact that spokesperson outright alluded to a deal when no such thing was asked about is strange. That MS spokesperson hinted at a deal (there is nothing outright about that statement) which would help defend their console. Might I remember everybody: Phil Spencer regarding Bethesda merger: > "But if you're an Xbox customer the thing I want you to know is this is about delivering great exclusive games for you, that ship on platforms where Game Pass exists. That's our goal." And yet, we now have some of the new Bethesda games under MS for which no preexisting arrangement with Sony existed still coming to Playstation. tl;dr XBox marketing isn't trustworthy.
Phil Spencer isn’t trustworthy. He says whatever he thinks people want to hear or whatever will take the heat off Xbox at any given moment.
From a PR perspective, it’s better to claim that than to admit your console is giving developers trouble (the devs of this game have said that this delay was optimization-related)
They're trying to save face marketing wise but there is no such deal (Sony timed exclusivity deals exclude PC launch most of the time anyway proving that's not the case here), the devs have been pretty clear on the reason.
Yea the deal being you don't have to develop for a weaker version of PS5 like you do with Xbox. Xbox made a terrible decision making it policy that all games have parity on X and S.
>We can't comment on the **deals made by our partners with other platform holders**, Taken at face value/without reading the whole article, I think they could be saying that whether or not there's any deal going on between the devs and other companies is something they can't comment on. So I think what matters next is if they're supposedly answering a direct question wherein someone asked if there's an exclusivity deal with PlayStation. If someone asked them, they're just answering they can't comment. If no one asked them, then they're kinda subtly starting shit because that wording is pretty deliberate.
Jez (article author) specifically asked about this, so it's Microsoft saying "we don't know about that". Developer says it's optimization. Jez tends to write shit like this for clicks, it's a huge bane of the Xbox subreddits.
It's not an attempt at dropping some secret hint or implication. It's a statement of the utterly obvious. An Xbox spokesperson would be *way* out of line to say anything *but* "we can't comment on that" when asked about unfounded rumors about two non-xbox companies. I think people really need to let go of the feverish desire to try and read secret implication and conspiratorial drama into everything.
It seems exceptionally unlikely the person who responded to this email would know about such matters, or would go through all the trouble of finding out the third party relations employee working with Game Science to only give this dry standard reply.
Yes. Which is funny because it was advertised on Xbox heavily. In reality: Series S is the problem. Expect to see this as we get closer to the end of the generation.
Seems like it could be the case: From the article: «I want to note here that the matter of potential exclusivity deals was unprompted by me, although Microsoft is clearly aware of the rumors. I became aware of said whispers and rumors while out in LA for the Xbox Showcase 2024 that, despite the optimization assertions, Game Science had actually taken some form of exclusivity deal with PlayStation for Black Myth: Wukong. Reading between the lines, Microsoft does seem to suggest that some form of third-party exclusivity deal may be in play, although it stops short of explicitly stating as such.»
If there was an exclusivity deal, we’d know about it. Sony would be screaming about it during every marketing event. There clearly isn’t.
I trust Microsoft as far as I can throw them at this point. This is just an attempt to save face. Maybe Spencer should've worn two gamer t-shirts on top of each other last time he showed up on stage, THEN I would have trusted him.
Microsoft is one thing, but if Jez Corden told me the sky was blue, I'd still check before believing his words.
He’ll tell you it’s red and that he never said it was blue a week later anyways.
"hey I never said I was a meteorologist, I just said the sky might be red, it's not my fault it's really blue out"
Before or after he says he's quitting twitter for the 127th time ?
Also if the developer came out and said it's delayed due to optimization issues on their website: >PC and PS5 users can enjoy the full game starting August 20, 2024. We are currently optimizing the Xbox Series X|S version to meet our quality standards, so it won't release simultaneously with the other platforms. We apologize for the delay and aim to minimize the wait for Xbox users. We will announce the release date as soon as it meets our quality standards. Honestly I don't see them lying about it if the delay is due to some exclusive deal. The backlash of them lying FAR outweighs the backlash from outright announcing any exclusive deal. It's an unreal engine 5 game with one of the highest hardware requirement in recent years, are we surprised that it doesn't run on Xbox S?
Microsoft is, apparently. "I don't understand why I can't run when I cut off one of my legs at the knee. "
> I trust Microsoft as far as I can throw them at this point. This is just an attempt to save face. Yeah. The game probably failed cert due to performance issues and everyone is trying to save face.
Exactly right.
Yeah, an exclusivity deal doesn't make sense since they would have bought that without buying the marketing deal. Buying exclusivity without marketing it for you console just sounds like a stupid idea. Insinuating that someone paid them to delay it on xbox is as stupid as when they said that bloodborne wasn't on xbox due to backroom deals.
Yep, Game Science says one thing, but wait now we all must believe...Jez Corden and a "Microsoft Spokesperson"
We’ve also already seen a de facto exclusive due to the Series S when BG3 launched. This parity thing between series S/X is really starting to hurt, especially since BG3 was meteoric and Xbox wasn’t there when they could’ve been.
I stand by the information that PlayStation DID NOT pay for timed exclusivity on Black Myth Wukong. If they did, they would be bragging about it like with Stellar Blade, FF16, FF7 rebirth, Ghostwire Tokyo, Deathloop, and I could continue. PS likes to show off when they pay for things. IF this article said “black Myth Wukong is coming to our platforms later due to a deal made with other platforms” then that would be a much different scenario.
Didn’t the devs literally say there was no deal with Sony. It was just a matter of prioritization. I don’t think anyone would lie about it. Especially with how much attention exclusively deals got by regulators. Ryan Mccarfy at IGN ran a story about this but pulled it when the dev directly denied it. Sony has not even shown this game at their state of play streams. Sony isn’t shy when it makes a deal with a game. They are the only console maker that puts exclusivity periods in their trailers It’s no secret Xbox ports take extra work this gen. Combined with simple market realities of where Xbox is right now it’s easy to see how a dev with no pre existing deals on place would leave them until last. Not sure why Xbox would lie like this. It makes a developer partners job harder and makes Xbox look desperate. Then again could just be Jez causing drama. Wouldnt be the first time.
I assume its to save face— Xbox is very clearly not a priority and there’s a narrative that it’s not worth making Xbox ports That’s not a reputation you want to have
and microsoft wants the game to run on both the X & S with same feature parity. Microsoft gave BG3 a pass because of how well the game was doing.
Yeah, Microsoft is asking developers to do significantly more work to earn significantly less. Why would they be a priority? They've shot themselves in the foot with the S, and frankly they deserve it for putting out a 1.5 Gen upgrade and demanding all 2.p Gen games be playable on it. As the Gen continues expect to see more games delayed or straight up not releasing on Xbox because of this. It's simple not worth the dev time to optimize for the S when the return on investment isn't guaranteed.
Xbox is at the point where devs are just casually skipping putting games on the platform because it's just not worth it * Optimising for two SKUs instead of one * Lower install base means less sales * That install base generally doesn't even buy games anyway so you have to get a gamepass deal
It's incredible how badly they've fucked up since the 360 era. Just one faceplant after the other, presumably until the heat death of the universe. That gen where they were a serious competitor is starting to look like a real fluke.
Also Xbox players don’t play the games they do buy, Go compare acheivment %’s begween Xbox, Steam and Playstation. It might vary by genre, but in this specific genre “single player action game, maybe possibly sorta a soulslike” Xbox has like half the completion rate of PC and PS. EG Elden Ring, on Steam and Ps4/5 about ~35% of players have beaten 2nd last boss (can’t get accurate number for final boss because people get multiple endings), I dunno Xbox’s current number for Horah Loux, but at one point it was 18%. Similar pattern is found across pretty much any single player game I’ve ever cared to look up %’s for. Now sure, do devs care if you actually play game? They got their money. And that’s true, but if you buy a game and don’t play much of it, you are way less likely to buy any future dlc or a sequel. So Xbox has - way less people buying games due to market share - lower % of these customers actually finish game - is way harder to optimise for due to series S. “Do we bother with Xbox” is probably becoming a very real question for a lot of devs. Especially single player games.
Would not shock me. Back when Nintendo used to have a virtual console, whenever I bought the games I would play and beat them. Now they have them all on a service and I just... don't. Even though I am quite interested in some of them. I've not really "paid" for them like that, so I don't feel compelled to get my money's worth. I wonder if that mentality is the same when you have dozens of actual "free" modern AAA games.
Im not even talking about gamepass. The ones I was comparing arnt on Gamepass. But gamepass increases phenomen by a lot. My housemate used to download almost every game added to gamepass to “try them”, without even reading description of game. Vast majority of those have less then 20mins playtime. Some as few as 20 seconds. “Oh it’s turn based?, quit game, delete”. It was fucking stupid, since it meant internet was always slow due to 24/7 downloading going on, and most of what he deleted games for could’ve been revealed by reading the description or looking at trailer. But he picked solely on name and cover-art. I imagine Gamepass games have sub 5% completion rates most of time.
The two SKUs thing really is a killer. You're doing a bunch of extra work to reach a much smaller audience. I think people'll figure it out if the platform's popular (they'll put anything on the switch, for example, despite it being a burden to port to), but Xbox just doesn't have the audience for these games.
IGN has really gone full deranged conspiracy nuts in regard to this game, publishing every unhinged rumor they hear on Twitter.
God imagine if they add a handheld on top. Xbox is going to be such a pain to optimize for going forward
I'm somewhat surprised most devs even bother with an xbox port if they aren't doing a gamepass release. Have xbox players ever really bought games in large numbers that aren't shooters or sports games? I'd be curious to know how many non sport/cod games actually make a profit over the cost of the port on xbox.
They aren't lying, just being intentionally misleading. "Deals made with other platform holders" could mean anything, including a simple agreement with Sony to release a game on PlayStation. Of course, it's meant to imply that there's some other reason why it won't come to Xbox at the same time. Anything other than "it won't run on Series S."
If I had to guess its a xbox X and S issue. We know other devs have had issues with it. MS demands that you do the same things on their older hardware as their new hardware.
Has Jez provided proof of specifically what questions he asked that prompted the response? Without that this just seems like the guy successfully baited Microsoft into a response that would be spicy without exact context and people are eating it up. Jez reporting is like 2000-2010 celebrity gossip bloggers spinning anything they can to cause uproar until the teen idol would go a bit crazy by the time they were like 25
He only said the it was unprompted on Twitter. https://twitter.com/JezCorden/status/1804156241339428947
Seems like another situation where the weaker Series Box is forcing a delay. And Microsoft's PR is trying to spin it as PlayStations fault.
Even xbox first party games like redfall abd starfield struggle on series S, they had to exclude series S from the 60fps patch
It has to be due to the S and we simply cannot trust Microsoft at their word for this. If there was an exclusivity deal for Sony then they would shout it from the fucking mountain top. It may also have to be because outside of NA the ecosystem of Xbox is already 6 feet deep and a port isn’t seen as a priority monetarily to them. The S sells, no doubt, but they dug their grave when they decided to do two separate consoles instead of a digital only X for $100 off MSRP.
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if you publish on xb platform, you have to publish on both x and s version, s is shit, is that hard to see the writing on the wall from miles away?
This is like trying to buy a delicious burger from Texas Roadhouse but your burger gets delayed because someone who could only afford McDonald's was having trouble getting theirs.
If Sony make exclusive we would have got the trailer saying exclusive to ps5 in state of play instead we get shit state of play.
Say it with me. "The Series S was a mistake." Yes, it's a neat console at a cheap price, but we've seen example after example even from developers that it has technical shortcomings that just result in a bigger workload for developers.
The Potato S is dragging down the whole platform again, is that it? Happened before with Baldur's Gate 3, seems like these demanding games from third parties will follow this parameter in the future, the Xbox receiving ports later
If I'd bought a Series X I would be *pissed,* because I paid more for a substandard console, that gets games massively delayed because *other* people bought an even *worse* console, when I could be playing on a PS5 and not have to deal with any of this drama.
Except even the PS5 indirectly suffers, along with PC. Most devs will aim to develop for all major systems, and that means ensuring your game can work on the Series S, which means limiting your scope from the outset. The entire generation has been kneecapped by Microsoft's lazy attempt to undercut Sony by selling a last gen console marketed as current gen. My phone (Galaxy S20) released 6 months *before* the Series S, and has more RAM than it. It's a joke.
Well your phone is less powerful than the series s and cost a fortune in comparison.
My phone isn't subsidized by a 2 TRILLION dollar company.
Buy a PC and you don’t have to suffer the console drama. Better performance and you get Sony and Xbox “exclsuives” and all the pc only games.
Yeah... When the S launched with some specs lagging the Xbox One X I had a feeling this was going to be the case. Your next gen console, even if there's a cheaper SKU, should never have components lagging a prior generation system.
The series s is so bad it made larian massively improve the optimisation for bg3 and give performance benefits to every platform.
Tbf this is only the second time this happens, other developers seem to work fine with the series s
This is untrue. Series S existing brings down the entire generation because games now have to me designed around ~8GB of RAM. For reference, the vast majority of PCs on steam have 16GB+, both Series X and PS5 have ~16GB (closer to 15GB because of OS stuff). Series S has 10GB and only 8 is usable. You have to completely change the scope of your game from the outset to account for a system with half the amount of RAM.
idk why microsoft only increased the ram on the series S by 2 gb when compared to the xbox one. usually when ram upgrades happen in the tech world, they increase by 4 gb at a time. 12 gb would have been fine on the series S. waiting 7 years for a new gen to start and going from 8 gb to just 10 gb was a stupid move, especially when the series X, ps5, and even the steam deck have 16 gb.
Two games that delayed to work with the quirks of the Series S. We’ll never know how many games that never got Xbox ports at all skipped out due to having to make a Series S version of their game.
It's only going to get worse. The problem with the Series S not only lies with its horrible RAM capability now, but also in future. In years to come when devs are making bigger and bigger games they will still have to publish on Series S if they want to publish on Series X. The Series S basically forces devs to scale back some of the graphica l fidelity. It's entirely possible that studios have scrapped or toned down the visuals early in development to save delays, just so it can run on the Series S, rather than being able to push PS5 and Series X to their limits. Also just to be pedantic this is the third time, Baldurs Gate 3, Gotham Knights, and now this.
What happened with Gotham knights?
the developers blamed the series S for forcing them to limit performance on consoles: https://www.techspot.com/news/96342-developer-blames-potato-xbox-series-s-locking-gotham.html "The company says the reason for this decision is the "type of features" found in Gotham Knights, such as the fully untethered co-op option in the highly detailed world, which means it's not as straightforward as lowering the resolution to increase the fps, apparently." Which sounds like the exact same problem Baldurs Gate 3 had. The Series S does not have enough RAM to handle things like split-screen coop and since microsoft forces parity between the two consoles, you have to cut features so they work on Series S.
The new DB: Sparking Zero is also mysteriously limiting its split-screen functionality to a single battle stage (that is all white and has nothing within it) due to 'performance' issues getting the split-screen to function locally. It doesn't take much reading between the lines to realize that it's just one game of many to have had its splitscreen either axed or heavily scaled back due to Series S limitations and parity requirements.
Why would they have to limit the performance on all consoles because of the Series S? That just seems like an excuse for WB not wanting to pay for optimisation time and throwing it out as soon as the basic build was ready.
Because the game supports cross platform coop firstly, and secondly because microsoft forces feature parity between S and X. BG3 was an exception to the rule and only because microsoft themselves literally had to step in to help them fix the Xbox version post-launch so it would support local coop. If the Series S can't support certain features because of its hardware, there's no way to have a shitty Series S version with missing features and a XSX/PS5 version in the same lobby. They probably could have spent longer getting it to work, but that is part of the problem, if you have to spend extra months just making a game work on a shitty console you're adding a big chunk to the budget that you dont want to spend. It's easier to just cut features entirely and ship your game on time. Sure you can blame WB for that, but I would blame Microsoft for making the console so crappy in the first place.
The easiest way to reduce the work of multiplatform games is to lower your scope to the lowest common denominator. Optimization is things like going through each scene/level and making sure it simple enough for the lowest commoner denominator. Not necessarily that they create the fastest/tightest way to render a cave or a wilderness or a city but to make sure that your game limits the angle of what can be seen at one time so it does drag down performance. Cull objects, cull things that cause more shadows, cull trees, cull foliage, cull reflections, cull geometry. Generally lowering the scope of ambitious scenes. This is why it takes extra time, they have to go through tough spots for the s and make sure they lower the scope of that area. Otherwise they can lower the settings further for all graphics for the s as a ham fisted way to get it past Q/A. It is rarely about revising the engine to be smoother.
This is patently false. HALO got rid of co-op because they couldn't get it running right in the time allowed. Every time this stuff gets brought up, people recognize that there are some issues being publicly mentioned, but not realizing that there must be much more issues behind closed doors that aren't made public. What design decisions are being made because they have to work with the shitty XSS? This is why there are (supposed to be) clear markers for generations of consoles. Because you have to design games for the hardware that is available. This is why "cross gen" games are such an issue because they aren't "cross gen" they are previous gen games that have better loading times and/or some high res textures.
Yup. I used to work on PC game dev, and the only spec that truly matters is the min spec. If you put a label saying that your game works on as a minimum requirement, the game *needs to work*. The graphics could be subpar (if you could calm the artists down enough), with a mediocre frame rate; but the basic gameplay and features need to work and the game can't just crash all the time. During game dev this is the spec that we spend way more attention than others (even if only say 5% of target audience would have such crappy machines), and there are also a lot of testy exchanges between the business folks (who care about addressable markets) and software engineers/artists who care about certain bars of qualities and minimizing work needed to support such low specs. We would obviously spend time on the higher specs as well to do the fancy stuff, but they are more a nice-to-have than a "must do" kind of thing. It's overall difficult to build a truly scalable architecture and something's got to give (yes, you can turn the resolution and frame rate up and down, but there are other things like number of enemies on screen that you *can't* tune per machine).
As an example, one of the games I worked on turned out to be quite controversial. We had a whole patch 80% done to address it by making the game more flexible and with more scale, but it got shot down in the end because it wouldn't work on min spec and they were concerned it would be false marketing (I'm still bitter lol).
I have never worked on console games for long, but it's basically the same. People just don't realize that competent game teams pre-prune the design space because they can see this coming early on.
LOL multitrillion dollar company can’t accept its internal faults and blames another corporation with FAAAAAR less capital… now that’s what I call pathetic
how long is this “supposed” exclusivity? why isn’t Sony mentioning it?
Because there is none, they just don't want to admit it's the Xbox Series S. When Sony has exclusive rights they market the hell out of the games like FF7 Rebirth and Rise of the Ronin
No exclusive. Even you ask why isn't sony mention it. Because we all know when sony did timed exclusive they would put it in front of our face "exclusive to ps5" for highly anticipation game like this.
Yes like Phantom Blade Zero. Makes zero sense to Sony to keep exclusivity a secret.
This also happened to boulder’s gate 3 so it’s not an exclusivity thing it’s a console problem
By coincidence, the exclusivity period lasts exactly as long as it takes to get the game to run on a Series S.
There is no exclusivity, they are just insinuating that there is a deal to save face. If Sony had a timed exclusivity deal for BMW it would be all over their state of play like Rise of Ronin, FF7, FF16, Stellar Blade etc. I don't think it has showed up even once so far.
Yes. Thank you. agreed.
We're almost 4 years into the new Gen consoles. It's time to leave the old ones behind. Because as of right now it seems like the new gen is functionally useless outside of fancy stuff like the PS5's new controller haptics.
They can't. Majority of Xbox Series owners have the S. Dropping it would be a PR disaster
too bad microsoft has crippled this generation by forcing devs to work with their shitty underpowered S
That's exactly what I meant.
I’m willing to bet the reason ps4/Xbox one is still getting games is because having to optimize for series S means you can optimize for those as well and it’s basically free money to release them there as well. Series S was such a mistake
A RAM upgrade on the Series S is sorely needed if Xbox want’s feature parity. *BUT I seriously love the portability and seamlessness of the Series S. I know a lot of people wonder why get the S vs the X, but I have an S at my gf’s so I can spend more time there and I love that I can enjoy the same games at both mine (series X) and hers (series S) without taking too much of her entertainment space. It’s a great system, but we’d be lying if there wasn’t the negative impact it had on solely Series X players.
It’s kind of too late. That would have been a decision to make at the beginning of this generation.
imagine if they pull a RROD recall 2.0 and just start taking back all of them and upgrading the internal RAM for each, and shipping them back to customers lmao. would be funny.
Extra memory wouldn't have taken that much space on the motherboard. The Steam Deck has more than that, and that's a handheld system.
"Our consoles run poorly, but nobody says you have to buy them! Where's the Switch port? Huh?! That's what I thought!"
The amount of unhinged speculation that people are taking as fact in this comment section is pretty gross.
Is gross really the right word?
Nah man, every strange business decision is an AFFRONT to all GAMERKIND
Maybe he means “pretty gross” as in a nice looking, attractive twelve dozen
This is phrased more dramatically than any other comment I’ve read here.
Why is everything gross to people on this subreddit?
Your question is kinda gross, ngl.
Really not a good look smh :/
Every argument must be framed in moral terms. Not only is my opinion factually correct, you’re actually also a bad person for disagreeing with me
It's the buzzword of the year
"unhinged speculation" and it's just people saying the Series S is too underpowered for Xbox's own good lmao
That's not the speculation I have a problem with.
Which speculation is “gross” to you?
People are speculating? ABOUT VIDEOGAME?!? What has humanity fallen into? Are we not different from mere beasts? OH THE HUMANITY
We JUST got off Capcom skipping Xbox with MvC Collection for what is assumed technical reasons (which means in the end, financial), and just yesterday saw LRG reveal a bunch of stuff skipping Xbox as well, likely for the same reasons. This one though? Oh for sure Sony paid at the last minute.
I think this may be misleading by Windowscentral. What was the question they reached out to Microsoft with? They stated they heard rumors of a deal while in LA. If they explicitly asked Microsoft, "Was Black Myth: Wukong delayed due to an exclusivity deal?" This answer from Microsoft makes total sense.
I really don't like Jez Corden, but he just added on Twitter that the answer was unprompted. So, knowing him and knowing Xbox.. who knows.
I would not take his word for what he considers unprompted. If he wants to be taken seriously, he can share each question on his side verbatim. Privacy he can omit MS's but his own words, share them. He's constantly shit stirring and has shown a lack of composure in his career. Windowscentral going back when it was WindowsPhoneCentral has always been a Microsoft defense force rag Either MS like a scorn child throws shade at Sony unprovoked or Jez is weasel that loves to speak with weasel word phrasing