Black Myth: Wukong was one of the biggest breakout hits of 2024 both critically and commercially after receiving many Game Of The Year nominations and selling more than 20 million copies. It also had its share of drama surrounding the lack of an Xbox release despite it being announced, and now we may know why.

When Xbox was suddenly omitted from its list of platforms prior to release rumours and speculation began to swirl. There was talk that the Series S couldn’t run it as well as rumours that PlayStation had bought some sort of exclusivity deal at the last minute. Xbox’s own statement that they can’t comment on other companies deals only added fuel to the exclusivity rumour.

Director Sets The Record Straight

Today on Chinese social media platform Weibo Black Myth: Wukong director Feng Ji, who goes by Yocar, has indeed said that the lack of an Xbox version is due to the “10GB shared memory” of the Xbox Series S. Because of this it would have made it impossible to release the game on Xbox without “years of optimization experience”.

The full quote, which is a response to the reaction of the game reads:

“Although it wasn’t too surprising, I still feel a bit emotional after securing everything. Everyone’s combat power is truly terrifying. The only thing missing is the Xbox robe… which somehow feels a bit wrong (but that 10GB of shared memory—without years of optimization experience, it’s really hard to make it work).”

Now whether you want to read into that as a Series S problem or the developers lack of experience with optimizing is up to you. This was Game Science’s first major release. But the fact remains the the Series S is once again causing issues for the biggest games coming to the Xbox platform.

Where this leaves a Black Myth: Wukong Xbox version isn’t clear. Xbox has faced issues like this in the past with developers such as Larian and helped them, so it’s quite possible that is going on behind the scenes, though Ji didn’t say. It’s also possible the game simply never sees the light of day on the Xbox platform.

We know Game Science is working on a major DLC for the game before working on a sequel so it’s possible they work with Xbox and release some sort of definitive edition in time for the DLC, but only time will tell.