Black Myth: Wukong director reveals the real reason why the blockbuster skipped Xbox

BLACK Myth: Wukong was one of the best-selling games of last year despite skipping Xbox at launch.

The first major game from Game Science was nominated for five awards at The Game Awards, and picked up two, for Best Action/Adventure Game and the Players’ Voice Award.

Game Science stated that Black Myth: Wukong would be released on Xbox Series X|S eventually, but no release date has been given.

Microsoft has asserted that developers must ensure that games released on Xbox must be playable on both the Xbox Series X and the less powerful Xbox Series S.

Studios are not allowed to release games on the Xbox Series X without having an Xbox Series S version.

This has resulted in the delay of a number of games launching on Xbox, most infamously Baldur’s Gate 3, which eventually removed the split-screen co-op mode on the Series S.

It was suspected that the simultaneous release on Xbox Series S was the reason for the delay, but Game Science hadn’t said this explicitly.

That is until Game Science CEO and Black Myth: Wukong producer Feng Ji took to Chinese social media platform Weibo to explain the delay.

Feng claims that the Xbox Series S hardware is to blame for the delay and that the team has struggled to optimise the game for the platform.

He says: “The only thing missing is Xbox, which somehow feels wrong.

“But the 10GB of shared memory is really hard to make work without years of optimisation experience.”

The Xbox Series S has just 10GB of system memory compared to the Series X’s 16GB.

It was previously speculated that Game Science had signed a console exclusivity deal with PlayStation, but Feng has denied these rumours.

Game Science claims that it is still working on an Xbox version of its blockbuster hit, but doesn’t have a timeline for the port’s release.

If you want to read more about the game, check out the five best PlayStation games of 2024.