Porting Games To Xbox Can Become A Nightmare, Says Dev

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Abdullah Waseem

At T4G, my task is to cover the latest news around the gaming globe ASAP and with the utmost precision. I adore all the games and respect all the devs behind the amazing games that we get all year. So, whether it’s a PC or a Console game, I got it all covered. 

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There have been several instances in recent years where games get ported to Xbox later than PlayStation. Black Myth: Wukong is the latest example, but these delays have been attributed to the optimization problems that come with the less powerful Xbox Series S.

However, another problem has come to light recently. Blingame, the indie developer behind an upcoming Metroidvania game, HAAK, has highlighted what a ‘nightmare’ porting games to Xbox can be.

Why it matters: There seem to be various obstacles and bugs with the procedure you have to follow to port your games on Xbox. This is quite astonishing for a massive platform like Xbox.

The HAAK developers were recently asked about the state of Xbox and PlayStation ports of their game on X. The studio revealed that the PlayStation port is going smoothly, but they’ve given up on the Xbox version because of the bugs in the Microsoft Partner Center. 

What seemed like a simple procedure turned into a nightmare due to many bugs in Microsoft Partner Center.

-Blingame

The studio encountered several bugs during the registration process. Furthermore, when they tried to reach out using Microsoft Support, they ran into bugs again, preventing them from initiating an inquiry.

The team then reached out to Xbox, but it seems the problem is related to Microsoft and beyond Xbox’s responsibility. Much to everyone’s surprise, the studio had been trying to resolve the issue for 14 months, but it has not been successful.

If everything had gone smoothly, they would have prepared the port in just two weeks. This whole scenario is quite baffling and doesn’t give Microsoft a good look. It is only natural to assume that other studios run into similar issues.

If this remains the case for the future, Microsoft could see more problems later down the line. While the gaming giant likely offers better support for AAA studios, we wouldn’t be shocked to learn that some of them ran into similar hurdles.

Abdullah Waseem

News Reporter

Abdullah is an avid gamer who primarily plays single-player titles. If you can’t find him anywhere, he’ll probably be at his desk playing The Witcher 3 for the millionth time. When he isn’t playing games, he’s either reading or writing about them.