Uh oh. It appears that Xbox users may never get the chance to play Game Science’s award-winning action-adventure title, Black Myth: Wukong.
This follows rumors of a secret PlayStation 5 exclusivity deal orchestrated by Sony, swiftly debunked today via a post on Weibo.
Game Director Feng Ji confirmed that an Xbox Series X/S version of the game was never planned. He expressed disappointment that the only thing missing from Black Myth: Wukong’s success story is an Xbox version, stating, “…the 10GB of shared memory - without years of optimization experience - is really hard to make work.”
The statement was made in conjunction with the game’s recent celebration after winning Game of the Year, Best Game You Suck At, and Outstanding Story-Rich Game at the 2024 Steam Awards. Feng Ji also thanked players and fans for their support and congratulated the other nominees and winners, such as Bloober Team’s Silent Hill 2 Remake, which took home the Outstanding Visual Style award.
This recognition marks a much-needed triumph for Game Science following the drama at The Game Awards, where members of the development team were visibly emotional after losing to Astro Bot, which won Game of the Year.
Now, fans are eagerly awaiting the game’s DLC.
On Microsoft’s side, porting the Monkey King’s story to Xbox consoles seems almost impossible. The Xbox Series S, the lower-priced and less powerful version of the console, is constrained by its 10GB of GDDR6 RAM, shared between the CPU and GPU.
While the game could run on the Xbox Series X, Microsoft requires all titles on its platform to function on both Series X and Series S. This policy has similarly challenged the release of AAA titles like Larian Studios’ Baldur’s Gate 3 and the latest Final Fantasy games.
Even on the base PlayStation 5 and high-end PCs, Black Myth: Wukong initially struggled with poor optimization, memory leaks, and game-breaking crashes. Thankfully, Game Science has addressed most of these critical issues. However, optimizing the game—a graphically demanding Unreal Engine 5 title—remains a Herculean task.
One of the most anticipated releases of last year, Black Myth: Wukong, has experienced both triumphs and challenges. Its gameplay is reminiscent of classic action titles like God of War and Devil May Cry, despite frequent comparisons to FromSoftware’s Dark Souls series. It was an epic tale that takes a different spin on Sun Wukong’s story from the wonderfully crafted Journey to the West.
At launch, the game had a record-breaking 2.4 million players, making it the top single-player game on Steam in 2024.