Xbox fans, you can apparently blame Series S consoles for making you wait to play No Rest for the Wicked after it launches on PS5 this October.
No Rest for the Wicked, the new action RPG from Ori developer Moon Studios, launched on PC in early access in 2024, and during this week's State of Play, it was revealed that the 1.0 update will launch in tandem with a console port for PS5 in October. Moon Studios soon after announced 1.0 is scheduled to hit Steam at the same time, but the release window for newly confirmed platforms Xbox and Switch remains "TBD" on the company's official website.
As it turns out, this seemingly has nothing to do with any timed exclusivity contract with Sony. Instead, according to Moon Studios CEO and No Rest for the Wicked game director Thomas Mahler (thanks, VGC), the lesser powered Xbox Series S is the problem. The more affordable Xbox Series console has been a burden for multiplatform developers from the very beginning, in essence because it's difficult to achieve performance parity with the much more capable Series X, and six years later, the little bro of the family is still slowing everyone else down.
Sharing insights on the official No Rest for the Wicked Discord channel, Mahler was asked point-blank why the game is launching on PS5 and PC before Xbox, and the famously candid game dev didn't mince words.
"Series S is making that rough," he said. "We'll ship it after in a good way once it's optimized like crazy for Switch 2 and Xbox."
Rubbing salt into the little white rectangle's wounds, Mahler joked in response to a sarcastic comment about a potential mobile port, "Series S and mobile specs aren't too far apart at this point." I suppose, with Xbox Cloud gaming in mind, he's not entirely out of line saying that.
On the bright side, at least No Rest for the Wicked is coming to Xbox and Switch 2 at all! That was never a guarantee, and as VGC points out, there was a time not so long ago that Mahler was considering skipping Xbox altogether due to, you guessed it, technical obstacles related to Series S.
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