Black Myth Wukong seems to be inching ever closer to an Xbox Series X|S release.
The ESRB has rated Black Myth Wukong for Xbox Series X|S, joining PC and PlayStation 5. It received a rating of T for Teen, mentioning Blood and Gore, Language, Partial Nudity, Violence.
This seems to be the looming end of speculation and rumors about why Black Myth Wukong did not come to Xbox Series X|S at the same time as PC and PlayStation 5. We have been reporting rumors that Sony secured timed exclusivity for the game on the PlayStation 5 before the Xbox Series X|S.
We won’t run down every detail on this anymore. It is important to remember that several journalists and content creators heard different things about this situation. So, there was some people questioning if the rumor was real to begin with.
There was plausible deniability about this situation because of Game Science itself. While Black Myth Wukong is an impressive achievement in terms of scale and game design, they are newcomers to making games for consoles.
Game Science was open about struggling to optimize their game for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, and originally announced the PC release would come far earlier than the consoles. With the developer suddenly announcing a simultaneous PlayStation 5 release, tongues started wagging about the Xbox Series S. And that’s when rumors started going around.
The consensus at this point from everything journalists and content creators shared is that Sony did not tie Game Science to an exclusivity contract. Instead, they approached Game Science with an offer to help optimize the game to ensure that they could get the game on PlayStation 5 first.
Anything else outside of this is still subject to speculation. For example, why was Microsoft unable to offer the same thing to Game Science to speed up their release on Xbox Series X|S? And why were some sources claiming that Microsoft’s own top brass revealed this exclusivity deal?
No one is questioning Black Myth Wukong’s success or popularity. But on PC and PlayStation 5, it launched with multiple technical issues. The fanboy narrative that Game Science was able to make the game perfectly on PC and PlayStation 5, but not on Xbox Series X|S, isn’t true at all.
And ultimately, this run of the rumor mill was unfair to Game Science. Did they want to become another poster child in the console war fanboys wage between consoles? They could have approached Sony to publish their game exclusively, the way Shift Up did for Stellar Blade. Instead, they chose to come to Xbox Series X|S too.
We hope that Game Science also sees success on Xbox Series X|S when they finally bring Black Myth Wukong to the platform. And we also hope that they earn that, by making this delay worthwhile. If Black Myth Wukong arrives on Xbox Series X and especially Xbox Series S in better shape than when it launched, then they would have demonstrated they’re ready to become a third party AAA console developer, and a major player in that market.
