No Rest For The Wicked Prioritizing PS5 “Given Current Market Conditions”

Moon Studios CEO Thomas Mahler has made some surprising announcements regarding No Rest For The Wicked.

As reported by Windows Central, Mahler stated that they’re prioritizing PlayStation 5 among the different consoles, but it initially sounded like it wouldn’t go to Xbox at all. On Discord, he shared this message that went viral:

Btw, given current market conditions, we might only release on PS5 and potentially Switch 2 for the time being – we’ll have to discuss things with MS to see what makes sense for Xbox.

Later, Mahler softened his position. He said this on Twitter:

There’s nothing to officially confirm yet.

We want to support consoles and just looking at the numbers, PS5 makes the most sense at the moment.

Ultimately we’ll ship on all platforms, but likely not at the same time!

Moon Studios worked with Microsoft before

For those who may not have realized this, Moon Studios was also the developer behind Ori and the Will of Wisps and Ori and the Blind Forest. Both those games were published by Microsoft, so there’s a surprising element to this that isn’t present in other third party studios. Why is their CEO talking about skipping Xbox when Microsoft used to publish their games?

The real issue Moon Studios is facing

No Rest For The Wicked was not originally self-published by Moon Studios. Take-Two Interactive’s ‘indie’ label Private Division was the original publisher. As such, it was drawn into turmoil after Take-Two shut down Private Division.  

While Take-Two shut down Roll7 and Intercept Games, Moon Studios managed to get out of that situation safely. They bought themselves out from their Take-Two contract, making No Rest For The Wicked a fully independent project.

But as recently as two months ago, Mahler was talking about how Moon Studios could be forced to shut down. At the time, he was airing his grievances on the review bombing that the game was receiving on Steam.

What Moon Studios needs today

The truth is, Moon Studios could use help with a new publisher for their latest game. While they did seek out to expand from Microsoft with No Rest For The Wicked, they may be better off getting help from Microsoft once again.

It certainly doesn’t help that Microsoft has established a foothold as the biggest third party publisher in the industry today. They actively publish games on PlayStation and Switch too. So as ironic as it sounds, Microsoft could enable Moon Studios to make No Rest For The Wicked the best it could be on all platforms. But that does all depend on if Microsoft is interested.