Black Myth: Wukong Developer Blames Xbox Series S on Xbox Delay - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 02 January 2025 / 6,149 Views
Developer Game Science released Black Myth: Wukong for the PlayStation 5 and PC in August 2024, while the Xbox Series X|S was delayed and has yet to release.
The game director for Black Myth: Wukong speaking on Chinese social network Weibo and translated by ResetEra has blamed the lower power of the Xbox Series S for the delay on the Xbox version.
"Although there were no big surprises, I still felt a little emotional after taking all of them [Steam Awards]," said the game director. Everyone's fighting power is so terrifying, but the only thing missing is the Xbox robe... It seems a bit wrong (but that 10G shared memory, without a few years of optimization experience, it really can't be taken down)."
The 10GB in memory is referring to the 10GB of RAM in the Xbox Series S. This compares to the 16GB of RAM in the Xbox Series X. Developers are required to release their games on the Xbox Series X and S in order to release them on the current generation of Xbox consoles.
It was previously reported by Forbes that there was an exclusivity deal for Black Myth: Wukong, which is why it isn't on Xbox consoles yet.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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I believe it. The PS5 and PC versions of the game weren't even that optimized at launch. Tbf, this was the studios first ever release.
Yes, it makes sense for the delay.
I mean, whenever a dev says that it is not possible is always funny but I can get delay and more difficulties to optimize for it; it is expected. I think Microsoft still learned from that; if the next generation have an X/S split too; the memory will probably be something they will improve (as I believe it is the main bottleneck in most cases).
I am super curious about those "mobile" devices that are going to come in few years from both Sony/Microsoft; because this is probably going to be like that; spec wize the games will need to be optimized for them vs the living room console version. So the dev kits will probably offer even better way to do that.
I said it at the start of the generation... Having 10GB of Ram on the Series S was a crap move, there needed to be parity across all consoles on memory capacity.
It's less of an issue than the 60% reduction would imply as the Series S is using smaller textures, but 10GB is still not enough to cover for that.
It's not a 60% reduction. It's a 37.5%. A 60% reduction would mean the Series S having 6.4 GB of RAM.
Sorry. Wrong math Fu.
10GB to 16GB is still a stark difference.
It was believed that the 10gb of ram in the SS was still better than the 12gb of ram in the One X and for the most part... it's true. the S memory is faster and more efficient but it still is less in terms of capacity. It should have had 12gb like the one X. That 2gb extra would have made all the difference.
Keep in mind the Xbox One X reserves 3GB for the OS and Background tasks... Leaving 9GB for developers.
The Series S only reserves 2GB so it only has 8GB for developers.
So there isn't much in it between the Series S and One X from a memory capacity standpoint for games themselves.
Just needed to be 16GB from the start so developers didn't need to mess with game logic and assets to squeeze it on Series S.
they are having to mess with the game logic anyways because both the PS5 and SX use a 16gb shared pool with X amount set aside for reserve. So a game like this where it says it requires 16gb can get away with needing less on console because they have to make it fit into less than 16gb. now obviously halving it was probably not on their bingo card but they did get it running to some extent. Just not enough to call it a day and release it. So it can get there with better more experienced people who know how to make it fit.
These games can run on 8gigs of Ram
It only runs on PC's with 8GB's because the video cards also have VRAM. So, it's 8GB + roughly 10GB VRAM. XBSS has no VRAM, just shared RAM
Whilst you are correct these games can and do run with 8GB of Ram on PC, you need to remember the PC has more memory overall available to games than the Series S.
But even with only 8GB of system Ram the 0.1% and 1% lows take a pummeling and frame times become erratic with Wukong even with 8GB System Ram+16GB GPU. - 16GB of System Ram is the better experience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Plr_8_HJaeU
Out of curiosity... wouldnt having different textures require texture duplicates?
Because even if the Series S was meant to render at lower resolution and with decreased settings, the (raw) textures (size) themselves would be unaffected to my knowledge.
Following that logic; the only way to decrease texture size is by actually downgrading the texture itself. And since all games must run on both series s and x, devs would only have 3 options:
(1) Ship with texture duplicates, which massively bloats the games overall file size
(2) Ship with downgraded textures to adress the series S' lower RAM (affects Series X negatively)
(3) Ship with unmodified textures and get into memory problems with the series S (swapping?)
1) Games already ship with the same textures of various resolutions, so that the low-quality texture is streamed in first, then "enhanced" with a higher quality one later. - You can thus just place a limit on how high-quality you want certain assets to be.
This is called Mip-Map.
2) Duplicating textures is a non-issue for installed file size, it's what "Smart Delivery" on Xbox resolved by having different "builds" of games (And thus install sizes) dependent on the console you are using.
3) Downgrading the texture itself is not the only way to decrease texture file size.
Textures typically exhibit certain "patterns" so you can analyze those textures, remove some information only to restore that information later via a lookup table.
Say for example you have a floor texture that uses lots of white, black, blue and grey pixels, you can simply remove all the blue pixels and place an instruction to tell the GPU to fill in the blank spaces with blue pixels when it comes time to render. (This is very dumbed down/simplified for lamens speak)
This is a lossless form of compression where ZERO data is actually lost and you can have compression ratios of upwards of 8 to 1 via nVidia's DCC compression algorithm.
Other forms of compression like S3TC/DXTC/3Dc+ texture compression algorithms are actually a lossly form of compression that does degrade quality as there is a conversion process happening to the asset, but that can be mitigated by boosting resolution.
Ram limitations due to poor texture management is actually a developer incompetence issue, game engines are extremely flexible on texture memory management these days, so it shouldn't even be an issue.
I like examples like this for people understand developers have trouble with limited hardware. Every time a game is delayed or not announced on Switch or Xbox people think it's Sony moneyhating games. In reality is just devs struggling to downscale their games
Fake news, the game director doesn't know what he's talking about. Playstation obviously paid for timed exclusivity!
Didn't Xbox hint at Sony for money hatting this title?
Didn't they already say this months ago?
They did, he had to say it again because people keeping believing the rumor that Sony paid them to make it exclusive. They didn't. I also want to emphasize that he didn't say it was NOT possible to bring to Xbox Series platform - they are trying to - what he is saying is people forget this is Game Science's first EVER game, and they simply do not have a lot of experience, as in first time ever developing for PS5 OR PC OR Xbox Series, and that trying to get it to run on 10GB of RAM is very very hard for their team.
obviously this is the case
Nice to see that the majority of people here aren't saying "Series S is fine it's just the lazy devs". If you were truly a gamer, you would have called out MS for having the same amount of RAM in the Series S as their tablets did years before Series S existed. Should've been obvious 16GB would be the minimum required.
I can see how taking a game that requires 16gb ram on PC and trying to make it fit into 10gb on SS can be challenging. But sometimes the challenge is worth the effort. Look at the impossible ports like RE2 on N64 and Doom on SNES or the more recent GTA3 on DC.... Sacrifices can be made to get the game running on lesser capable hardware.
At least on the PC you can also include the VRAM into the mix, something the consoles just dont have as their memory pools are shared between main and video. Whatever they did to get the game running on the 16gb total shared pool on PS5 can use a bit more tweaking as they did get it running on the SS but just not as stable and consistent.
I believe this is at least partly true...
But also, Rockstar said it's a nonissue for GTA6 which will be far more technically impressive
It was funny seeing silly people defend the Xbox S at the start of the geneartion saying it won't bottleneck anything when it was so bloody obvious it would.
So Stalker 2 another demanding UE5 game runs on the S, so does Flight Simulator, Hellblade 2 and the newly released best looking game by Digital Foundry Indiana Jones..
Also debunked that Wukong can run on 8gigs on Ram on a PC.
These devs need to take more accountability rather then finger point at hardware. They did state they are inexperienced, that's all they needed to say.
Hellblade for the most part looks terrible on series s. Not sure how it is on ps5, but the textures are blurry on series s. Try look at the ground or anywhere , it's a blurry mess. The only thing that was great about the game was the sense of scale and how being in a cave, felt like being in a real cave.
This is Hellblade 2 not Hellblade. I'll assume you are referring to the first Hellblade.
Sorry i meant hellblade 2. The recent one running on unreal 5. I played it a few months ago on series s. The first game was much better.
They have said a few times that they are a small inexperienced studio.
It was Microsoft who screwed this up by trying to hint Sony paid for exclusive rights to the game when they didn't.
Any proof that Sony didn't?
Yes.
There is not a single piece of marketing for this game that implies it is exclusive to PlayStation consoles.
You don't spend money on console exclusives and then not make that part of your marketing.
So you only assume Sony didn't because they didn't market it?
Also, why would Sony be open to admit that they moneyhatted this game?
Ever heard of Money under the table?
You can't have money under the table when you have investors and earning calls!
Sony is a huge global mega company, not a door to door sales man!
Deals can be made that are internal and sure the Shareholders might all know about. Businesses are known for doing shifty stuff all the time.
Why doesn't Sony just come out and debunk the rumour? Interesting that they don't.
Why should they bother to waste their time comenting on baseless rumours that have no affect on them?
Microsoft are the ones who started the rumor, they should be the ones held to account.
Because the rumour paints Sony as bad. Why not a simple debunk which will end up backfiring on Phil, benefiting Sony.
Paints Sony as bad?
It's a total non issue which no one outside of a few Xbox die-hards even care about.
Being accused of Moneyhatting isn't a good thing.
But the only people accusing Sony of it are fringe lunatic Xbox fan boys.
It would be like expecting Meta to debunk a rumour only three people believe that Mark Zuk is actually a lizard man.
It's not an issue that anyone serious is talking about.
Everyone except Sony fans are accusing Sony for moneyhatting.
Do you see the irony of you writing this, in a comments section of a story where the dev's themselves are blaming the Series S for the dely?
Do you also see that they called themselves inexperience. So which is it.
It's one and the same thing. Because of the lower spec of the series S, they can't make it work due to their inexperience and team size.
You see, the reason why someone thing GTA6 will be fine is because Rockstar have 4000 staff and infinite money.
But a little studio like Game Science who has only ever made phone games will struggle.
Hopefully this is now clear to you.
So get more experience and don't blame the hardware. Simple.
The issue, like he said was optimisation. Are they developing in the older way or taking advantage of all the new tech, which has a learning curve.
The problem with the Series S 10GB RAM was not taking into account that developers dismal at optimizing can release absolute bangers. Yes, this situation is as stupid as it sounds. It's akin to thinking that modders would fix Starfield only to realize later that they must be willing in first place.
Double-speak from the head developer to cover their incompetence or the fact that their publisher want quick bucks.
Well, it is a piece of shit. And mandating developers to release on it is bullshit too.
Meanwhile, you can find the game working fine on PC with similar memory. 🤡
I don't know why developers on Series S complain so much. Developers bringing AAA games to Switch just did it without yapping. Just do it and shut up.
Switch has a much higher installbase and they expect to make more money on that platform. Xbox has a low installbase compared to PlayStation and a very low one compared to Steam and they are kind of forced to release on Xbox, otherwise the rumour floodgates of them taking Playstation money starts to roll.
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