Ori Devs Next Game “No Rest For The Wicked May Be Skipping Xbox Due To “Market Conditions”
Ori Devs Next Game “No Rest For The Wicked May Be Skipping Xbox Due To “Market Conditions”
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The “market conditions” probably means he doesn’t think the game will make enough money on Xbox between terrible console sales and userbase encouraged by Gamepass not to buy games. Xbox sold less than 3 million units in 2024, even the Wii U sold more than 3 million in its 4th year. PS5 sold 4 million units in November 2024 alone, a single month. The Switch outsold Xbox in May 2025 a month before the Switch 2 came out. He is probably trying to get Xbox to give him a Gamepass deal with enough money to make it worth it.
A lot of games were already skipping Xbox while launching on every other platform exactly because of this reason: Granblue Relink, Shin Megami Tensei 3 Nocturne, Dave the Diver, Ys, Monster Hunter Story, Saga Frontier, Saga Emerald, Valkyrie Elysium, Gundam Breakers, Phantom Blade 0, Fate Samurai Remnant etc
Can’t blame them. They’re more limited than a big dev owned by a big pub. The xbox series platform is effectively dead and if an indie dev can’t get a game pass deal its probably not worth it.
Fair game, if you can’t make profit move on. Not everyone has billions to make failure after failure with no consequences like Microsoft
Meh. I wish they stuck with the Ori series.
I mean…”everything is an Xbox” according to Microsoft : P
But not surprise. Xbox install base remains much smaller and sales remain sluggish as they continue to transition towards a third party publisher. Less and less reason to ship games there, especially when you have to ensure your game works on Series X and Series S with feature parity (unless you get an exception) which adds further devtime and costs. It comes later after they’ve reached the platforms with bigger audiences.
Devs have been saying that if you’re not going to put your game on gamepass it is financially not worth the effort to put your game on xbox at all. Ergo, if gamepass isn’t cutting it for you, the smart thing any business would do is not put their game on xbox at all.
Gamepass is still a hell of a deal for customers but we are seeing more and more the effects of it on the industry as a whole.
AKA development is flopping a bit. I don’t think a lot of people would be mad if they just finished early access, launched the full version and just moved on.
Not too surprised at this point, as this was already common, and it’s becoming more and more common.
Ironically as Xbox goes closer and closer to being a third party, they are losing more third parties. Pretty sure the Series X will be my last Xbox console. Their next console/PC whatever it is is surely gonna be digital only, with a 100% focus on Gamepass.
Market conditions is a nice way to say no one buys games anymore on xbox due to a combination of a dwindling install base (only 30-35m series systems sold this gen, and many have since sold their xbox thanks to MS’ decisions) and the remaining people only using gamepass.
I’ve been saying this for years now but you’re going to see more and more games skip xbox as the sales keep declining. There’s been multiple journalists already reporting that they’ve heard from devs, both indie and AAA, at various industry events and they all question why they bother making xbox versions. Ports cost money, and also increase dev time of the game, and no one’s going to make ports just because people feel like they “have” to.
You missed the “at launch” part …
Rest For The Wicked sucks so I’m not surprised
Wasn’t this revealed first at an Xbox showcase, or am I misremembering?
>[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!”](https://x.com/thomasmahler/status/1947340601781051493)
If anyone actually has been following this studio and this game you know what’s going on 🤣
Clickbait garbage, devs says they will release on all consoles eventually
That’s quite a change considering Xbox published the Ori games for them.
It’s just so they can try and leverage a better GamePass deal if it does well after release. Makes sense. They’re also a smaller studio so to a lesser extent that gives them additional time to work out any potential kinks with a Series S port. Either way, tough state of affairs for MS gaming when developers are starting to say that they’ll get to them later.
Still not buying it. The fact the studio still has respect given the way it treats its staff is beyond me, not to mention the head of the studio saying games “shouldn’t be political”, a statement which is only ever said by people who politicise the existence of minorities.
I mean it has been EA on PC for how long with like a year in between major updates?
Watch it show up on gamepass in a year. Microsoft has given up the console war, they are in the subscription business.
he said for the time being, he never said he might outright skip
I thought Xbox owned that studio.
The Series consoles sold around 35-40m units, its not a Wii U level failure around 10m, if you don’t think your game can succeed on a platform with 40m players then that speaks more to the quality of your game then anything.
This is the studio that has a bunch of controversy around management so take anything they say with a grain of salt.
Based, the more Microsoft gets punished the better for us all