Coming from the Chinese market and immediately capturing the world’s attention, what Game Science has achieved with Black Myth: Wukong is truly worth celebrating. It’s no surprise that in the year of its release, it immediately grabbed a variety of awards from numerous media outlets and platforms as one of the best games in its category.
However, this action RPG based on Chinese mythology is currently only available on PlayStation 5 and PC. The much-discussed Xbox Series X|S version was never released, even as we start a new year in 2025, and now, the reason for this has finally come to light. While some have attributed this delay as a result of an exclusive partnership between Sony and Game Science behind the scenes, a recent post by the game director himself on Weibo confirmed the real reason behind the delay.
In a personal post, Feng Ji stated that the absence and delay in the release of Black Myth: Wukong on the Xbox consoles is due to the limitations of the consoles themselves, particularly the Xbox Series S. He admitted to feeling frustrated by the optimisation challenges posed by a console that only has 10GB of shared memory. He lamented that the Xbox Series version could not be released in 2024, even though it would have served as a sweet finishing touch to the various awards they had already won.
Of course, this suggests that we will eventually see the game appear on the consoles some time in the future, once Game Science has managed to get past the problems posed by the platforms. Considering the reception of Black Myth: Wukong thus far, that would definitely be a plus for the studio and players alike.
This is certainly not the first time that the Xbox Series S performance limitations have caused developers issues, resulting in delays. A similar situation occurred recently with Baldur’s Gate 3, which is perhaps why Microsoft is going beyond its console ecosystem, and investing more into Game Pass as a service.
