One of the most unusual stories of 2024 may have come to a strange conclusion, as a developer from Game Science has posted about The Black Myth of Wukongabsence from Xbox on the Chinese social media platform Weibo. Rumors of technical limitations seem to be the main reason for the game's lack of an Xbox port after all.
Yongar Feng-Ji, Head of Game Science, posted the following on Weibo: “Although there was no big surprise, I still felt a little emotional after getting all of them. Everyone's fighting power is so scary, but the only thing missing is the uniform XBOX … remember, it is really impossible to get without many years of optimization experience”. 10GB of memory, which certainly means that the console is the main limitation of the Xbox version.
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Let's take a short trip through the saga. Back in 2024, Black Myth Wukong was a very popular action game for many, doing well on PlayStation and PC. However, with no word on an Xbox version of the game, many were curious as to why the game skipped one of the major consoles. No official word was given at first, although two main theories were circulated: some kind of PlayStation exclusivity contract was preventing it, or the Xbox Series S was an obstacle for the development team.
On the Black Myth Wukong pre-order FAQ page, the following is written: “PC and PS5 users can enjoy the full game starting August 20, 2024. We are currently updating the Xbox Series X version | S to meet our quality standards, so it won't release at the same time as the other platforms. This indicates that additional work was being done on the Xbox version, but with the game being released in August and still no Xbox version this seemed unlikely.
However, a real spanner in this theory came through Microsoft's statement to Forbes. In an article written by Paul TassiA Microsoft representative provided this statement: “As we've said before, we're excited to launch Black Myth Wukong on Xbox Series X | S and we are working with Game Science to bring the game to our platforms. not commenting on the deals our partners have made with other platform holders but we can confirm that the delay is not due to Xbox platform limitations raised for us.”
Tassi would also post on Twitter that a source told him that Black Myth Wukong will not be on Xbox until August 2024 due to an exclusivity contract. IGN would confirm this report with his own separate source.
However, other journalists would say otherwise. Take Jeff Grubb, who said in an August episode of the Game Mess podcast that he heard that there was no “cash marketing agreement” that would give rise to prohibitionthough it didn't surpass other collaborations that led to the long-running PlayStation.
So this period of he said, she said, with very credible voices hearing different things from different people in the knowledge, deepened the mystery. Fast forward to today, and the CEO seems to have put the questions to rest. Of course, Game Science wasn't the only developer struggling with the Xbox Series S. Funcom's Dune Awakening studio CPO Scott Junior told us last year doing a Series S port would be a “challenge”.while the Stalker devs have said so making the S Series port “impossible”, although this statement was followed by an optimistic view of how any developer could eventually find out.
Now, just a few questions. Why did Microsoft outright say that technical problems were not the cause of the delay? Was it just a PR move, or since credible journalists have said there was an exclusivity deal, was there some confusion or miscommunication behind the scenes? Then there's the obvious question: when is Black Myth Wukong coming to Xbox? Will it be forever? Although this story, although it's pretty much wrapped up, there may still be a few twists and turns in it.
