In June of this year, State of Play announced the game KEMURI, which is currently scheduled to be released only on Playstation 5 and PC before the end of 2027. Developers at UNSEEN Studios say they are abandoning the Xbox Series X version | Not because of an exclusivity deal with Sony, but because the additional ports would have required too much work for a small team.
In an interview, when asked about the Xbox version, studio head Ikumi Nakamura explainedDevelopment is primarily taking place for PC, and the team is now adapting the project for consoles. According to her, large companies have dedicated experts to do this, while UNSEEN has to assign these tasks to its own engineers.
I hope people understand that transplanting is a lot of work. Large companies usually have dedicated experts who do this. But we’re a very small studio. If we had to do the porting ourselves, our engineers would be exhausted. I prefer to put people’s lives first. I don’t want anyone to have to sacrifice to make the Xbox version. People are more important.
On social networks, players criticized Ikumi Nakamura’s stance, pointing out that if the game was already adapted on the Playstation, it wouldn’t take much time to port it to the Xbox. She later posted additional comments on her social networks:
We are a very small studio, so our technical resources are limited. I’ve already talked about this. I’m really happy that people want KEMURI to come out on more platforms, but before we get bogged down with ports, I hope we focus on getting KEMURI properly polished first. That’s it.
I think it’s absolutely normal for everyone to share their opinions and discuss these issues. I used to love the Xbox controller too! In those days, I played a lot of CoD with him and got a lot of headshots. So I understand the love for Xbox! We are just a small team working hard to make KEMURI as good as possible first.
Please note that Ikumi Nakamura herself served as the creative director of Ghostwire: Tokyo, as well as the artist on The Evil Within and The Evil Within 2. She left Tango Gameworks before development of Ghostwire: Tokyo was completed.
KEMURI is a cooperative action game where three players take on the role of monster hunters. The event takes place in the vertical city of Kemuri, where the world of the living and the otherworldly reality intersect.
