Has the truth behind Black Myth Wukong's absence from Xbox has finally been revealed? It's complicated

One of 2024's more bizarre stories may have come to a strange conclusion, as a developer from Game Science has posted about Black Myth Wukong's absence from Xbox on Chinese social media platform Weibo. It seems as though rumours surrounding technical limitations being a major culprit behind the game's lack of an Xbox port have some merit after all.

Yongar Feng-Ji, Game Science CEO, posted the following on Weibo: "Although there were no big surprises, I still felt a little emotional after getting all of them. Everyone's fighting power is so terrifying, but the only thing missing is the XBOX robe... It seems a bit wrong (but that's 10G shared memory, it's really impossible to get it without several years of optimization experience". This is machine-translated, so take it with a pinch of salt, and it's worth noting that the Xbox Series S has 10GB of memory, which certainly implies that console is the main barrier to an Xbox version.

Let's take a brief trip through the saga. Back in 2024, Black Myth Wukong proved an incredibly 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 initially, though two major theories circulated: some kind of PlayStation exclusivity deal was preventing it, or the Xbox Series S was proving to be a hurdle for the development team.

On the Black Myth Wukong's pre-order FAQ page, the following is written: "PC and PS5 users can enjoy the full game starting August 20, 2024. We are currently optimizing the Xbox Series X|S version to meet our quality standards, so it won't release simultaneously with the other platforms. We apologize for the delay and aim to minimize the wait for Xbox users. We will announce the release date as soon as it meets our quality standards." This points to additional work being done on an Xbox version, but with the game releasing in August and still no Xbox version it seemed that this was proving difficult.

However, a real spanner in this theory came via a Microsoft statement to Forbes. In an article written by Paul Tassi, a Microsoft representative provided this statement: "As we have said before, we’re excited for the launch of Black Myth Wukong on Xbox Series X|S and are working with Game Science to bring the game to our platforms. We'd prefer not to comment on the deals made by our partners with other platform holders but we can confirm that the delay is not due to Xbox platform limitations that have been raised to us."

Tassi would also post on Twitter that a source informed him that as of August 2024, Black Myth Wukong was not on Xbox due to an exclusivity deal. IGN would later corroborate this report with its own seperate source.

However, other journalists would say otherwise. Take Jeff Grubb, who on an August episode of the Game Mess podcast said that he heard that there was no "money marketing deal" that would lead to exclusivity, though he didn't cross out some other collaboration leading to PlayStation's lenghty headstart.

So there was this period of he-said, she-said, with very credible voices hearing different things from different people in the know, deepening the mystery. Fast forward to today, and the CEO has seemingly put the questions to rest. Certainly, Game Science would not be the only developer which has struggled with the Xbox Series S. The CPO of Dune Awakening studio Funcom, Scott Junior, told us last year that making the Series S port would be a "challenge", while the Stalker devs have stated that making the Series S port felt "impossible", though followed up this statement with an optimistic take on how any developer could figure it out eventually.

Now, there are only a few questions. Why did Microsoft say outright that technical problems were not the cause of the delay? Was it just a PR move, or given that credible journalists have echoed that an exclusivity deal did exist, was there some confusion or miscommunication behind the scenes? Then there's the obvious question: when will Black Myth Wukong come to Xbox? Will it ever? This story, while largely wrapped up, might still have some twists and turns in it yet.