The co-founder and CEO of the studio behind the Ori games has said that the studio is prioritising the PS5, PS5 Pro and Nintendo Switch 2 versions of No Rest for the Wicked, and that the studio will “see what makes sense for Xbox.”
The game, which is currently in early access on Steam, is planned for Sony and Nintendo‘s consoles. However, in a message posted to Discord, Moon Studios CEO Thomas Mahler to Discord to say that “market conditions” meant that an Xbox version is at the back of the queue.
“Btw, given current market conditions, we might only release on PS5 and potentially Switch 2 for the time being,” said Mahler. “We’ll have to discuss things with MS and see what makes sense for Xbox.”
Following this snippet being posted to social media, discussion grew over the studio, which made its name via the beloved, then-Xbox exclusive Ori series, leaving the platform. Mahler himself then took to NeoGaf to respond, dispelling suggestions the move was a “shakedown.”
“Folks, can we drop the conspiracy theory insanity? If NeoGAF becomes more and more like the purple forum, don’t be surprised if people stop posting here as well,” wrote Mahler. “So no, it’s not a shakedown, it’s called common fucking sense.”
He went on to explain that while the studio would love to eventually come to all platforms, due to the speed with which the studio wants to add community-requested features, such as co-op, it has to prioritise PlayStation and Nintendo platforms.
“What our community has been wanting the most is Co-Op and Console support, so we want fulfill those wishes as soon as humanly possible. We’re already hard at work on Co-Op so people can play Wicked in Multiplayer pretty soon.
“And after that the idea is that we’ll release 1.0 sooner than initially expected so that we don’t have to deal with the hassle of being an Early Access Game on Consoles. Wicked is already in a pretty great state, so by the time we exit Early Access, we’ll be golden.”
Mahler also claimed that the time involved in porting the game to both Xbox Series X and the weaker Xbox Series S, a requirement for all modern Xbox titles, would take more time and resources than a PS5 and PS5 Pro port.
“And in order to get there fast, we’ll first support the platform that has the most users purely out of resource reasons. We’re a comparatively small indie studio, so doing a console port at the quality level we want is not a small task.
“Porting to Xbox means porting to Xbox Series X and Series S and that’ll take more time to optimize compared to porting to PS5 and PS5Pro. So we’re most likely going to do PS5/PS5Pro first and launch there in order to make fans happy and supply other ports later.
“That’s literally all there is to it. And yes, we’ll need to discuss with Xbox and Nintendo what the best strategies are to support their platforms and their features in the best way possible and that’ll be an ongoing discussion.”
Moon Studios announced in March that it was now a “fully independent” studio, after securing the publishing rights to its game No Rest for the Wicked from Take-Two.
The early access release for No Rest for the Wicked – Moon’s third game after Ori and the Blind Forest and Ori and the Will of the Wisps – was published by Private Division, the Take-Two label specialising in publishing games from smaller developers.
