The game development industry is incredibly hard to both break into and then stay in. Sure, you can start a company and attempt to make a game, but truly making the game, getting it out there for people to buy, and then bringing in the success of that game is much harder than some people realize. That’s why there has been so many layoffs within the gaming industry recently. In the case of Enotria The Last Song, the team behind it has been working for a very long time to make it something special and release it on multiple platforms.
However, on a special post on the game’s official website today, and reaffirmed on Twitter by the game’s official handle, Enotria The Last Song has been indefinitely delayed on Xbox. The PlayStation and PC versions should still be on track, but the Xbox version is now in limbo.
The question then becomes, “Why is it in limbo?” Well, the team released a rather blunt tweet on the matter, and it doesn’t paint Xbox or Microsoft in a good light:
That’s right, the game is currently ready to be submitted to Xbox so that it can “go gold.” However, Microsoft isn’t responding to them, so they can’t make any final changes or tweaks to ensure the game runs well. As a certain game with Wukong will remind you, making a game for Xbox can be very problematic.
So, not only does this make Microsoft look bad, and the Xbox look even worse as a console, it highlights a key problem that the company has had in 2024: layoffs biting them in the butt. You’ll recall that earlier in the year, 1900 people were laid off, and some were said to have been released from the ID@Xbox side of things.
Thus, instead of just submitting the game through the problem that Xbox set up for indie developers, they have to go directly through Microsoft, and that’s clearly not working well. What will be interesting to see is whether other indie developers are having these kinds of issues. Again, the Wukong title from last month was one such title with issues, but we’ve also seen AAA games, including a certain title from Larian Studios, have woes trying to get released on Xbox.
This highlights that the company, despite Phil Spencer’s words, isn’t in great shape and is ticking off numerous developers in the process. If things don’t turn around soon, they’ll only get worse.
