Xbox woes abound as the Black Myth Wukong situation gets weirder, indies get frustrated over lack of communication, and Series S continues offering a “challenge” to devs

Xbox, what the hell is going on?

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It’s been a real weird week for Xbox, with confusion over the status of Black Myth: Wukong, third-parties noting the ongoing challenges for development on Series S, and frustration from indie devs over poor communication coming out all at once. These are all isolated problems, but the as the industry and fans alike continue to struggle to understand Xbox’s position in 2024, they’re coming up at an inauspicious moment.

Xbox entered this console generation in 2020 with two new platforms: the Xbox Series X, comparable in power toSony’s competing PS5, and the less powerful Series S model. Series S can, in theory, do everything that the Series X can - just at lower resolutions and frame rates - and it sells at an attractive price point for players who don’t demand the most high-end gaming experiences. But since even before the launch of the generation, fans and developers alike have feared that developing a game for Xbox - and thus having to support both Series S and X - couldhamstring the creation of new, high-end games.

Dune: Awakeningchief product officer Scott Junior rather gently indicated that’s still the case in a recent interview withVG247. “It’s one of the reasons we’re coming out on PC first,” Junior said. “There’s a lot of optimisations we need to do before we release on the Xbox. But yeah, Xbox Series S is a challenge.”

That quote comes just after theothercontroversy aroundBlack Myth: Wukonghas been coming to a head. Developer Game Science said months before launch that it was"optimizing the Xbox Series X|S version to meet our quality standards, so it won’t release simultaneously with the other platforms.“At the time, the delay of the Xbox version of such a visually impressive game seemed like a sure signal that the Series S problem had struck once again.

The Black Myth: Wukong saga only got stranger last week, whenForbes contributor Paul Tassireported via an anonymous source that the game was delayed on Xbox due to an “exclusivity deal.“IGNcorroborated that report with its own sources. Other insiders soon after definitively asserted that there’s no exclusivity deal keeping Wukong off Xbox. IGN has stood by its original report, and Tassi has sincereiteratedthat he was “specifically told it’s not a tech issue for Xbox causing delay.”

It’s allextremelyconfusing, which is par for the course on Xbox’s relationship with its third-party developers at this point. The dev behind theSoulslike Enotria has announced an indefinite delay to the game’s Xbox version, claiming that Xbox has ignored its emails for months. “You can ask Xbox why they haven’t answered us for two months,” the studio said in a message to fans. “Obviously they don’t care about Enotria and they don’t care about you.”

Taken in aggregate, what does all this mean? Maybe nothing! These could all be isolated cases of various Xbox policies coming to public light in poor circumstances. But if you took an optimistic view of the Series S when it was first announced, or hoped thatMicrosoftwouldkeep the lights on at studios like Tango Gameworks, or bought a modern Xbox to playexclusives like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, well… It’s getting increasingly difficult to keep that optimism alive.

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In another case of Series S woes,Baldur’s Gate 3 launched on Xbox months late after Larian and Phil Spencer “found a solution.”

Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He’s been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.

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