Absolum Studio Clarifies Xbox Situation, Tells Fans To ‘Stay Tuned For Upcoming Announcements’
Update []: In response to this, the developer behind Absolum (Dotemu) has released a formal statement to Windows Central suggesting an Xbox plan could be in the works.
Here’s the full statement:
“Our community manager replied to community questions in good faith but with no context of our larger company strategy. Dotemu has always had a strong and positive relationship with Xbox and released multiple games on the platform, including this summer’s NINJA GAIDEN: Ragebound. While no plan can be shared as of today, Xbox fans should stay tuned for upcoming announcements.”
Original Story: There’s been a bit of buzz about a new game called Absolum recently – we’ve been seeing quite a lot of people trying to find details about an Xbox version, and so we’ve dug into the game’s Discord server to find out why it’s skipping Microsoft’s console platform at launch.
Absolum, if you don’t know, is a roguelite beat ‘em up from Dotemu – the company behind the likes of Streets Of Rage 4 and Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, although Guard Crush Games and Supamonks are also credited with working on it. It’s got a fantastic Metacritic average of 86 as things stand, but unfortunately the launch platforms are only PC, PS4, PS5 and Nintendo Switch.
So what’s going on? Well, the answer was shared by a community manager on Discord the other day, who responded to an Xbox fan by explaining that the studio had to prioritise certain platforms due to how small the development team is.
“The team behind Absolum are about as small as our in-game resistance movement. Because of the team size (as with all similar titles) we have to prioritise here and there. It’s pretty rare for us to release on EVERY platform and in this case, Xbox just wasn’t a priority and it’s not in our plans for THIS title.”
In a separate message, another apparent team member was a bit more cut-and-dry about it:
“Hi there. Atm we’re not planning an Xbox version, but who knows what the future holds.”
This is obviously a shame from an Xbox perspective, but it’s not like Dotemu hasn’t brought its games to Xbox before – in fact, a large number of them tend to get a release on Xbox, so this is just an unfortunate exception to the rule.
Here’s hoping the game ends up being a huge success and the team sees fit to bring it to Xbox, perhaps in the form of an Xbox Game Pass addition? We’ll have to wait and see, but for now, you’ll have to play it one of those other systems – or buy the ROG Xbox Ally and grab it through Steam instead!
