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Dying Light has been shuffling along through development for some time now, with plans that when it was released, it would be made available on not only the current generation consoles and PC, but the last-gen ones too. However, now developer Techland has released a statement saying that as much as it wanted to offer Xbox 360 and PS3 versions, it wouldn't be be able to do so.
The message was posted on the game's official Facebook page (though it's curiously now been removed), stating that by creating such a “next-gen feel” to the game, TechLand made a game that was just too visually complex for the last-gen systems to handle.
The release sounds somewhat like a piece of PR to highlight features of the game, as it addresses things like its ability to display “up to 200,000 objects” on a screen at once, its physics based lighting and its “threefold character development system.” All of these added up to making it too pretty for last-gen systems, apparently.
“Therefore, after thorough internal testing, we have come to the conclusion that we have no choice but to leave past-gen systems behind and release Dying Light exclusively on the next-gen consoles and PC,” it said.
While Dying Light is the first game to be released using Techland's own Chrome Engine 6, you do have to wonder how it wasn't aware that the game was too pretty to be optimised for a last-gen version before now. The game is done and set for release in just a couple of month's time.
In-fact it's still available for pre-order on many sites for the Xbox 360 and PS3. And yet the message stating that those versions were no longer available for pre-order, is now gone.
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KitGuru Says: Did any of you pre-order Dying Light on the Xbox 360 or PS3? I wonder if this was a premature announcement, hence its disappearance. [Thanks AGB]
If this is true that is absolutely unacceptable. You can’t advertise it as available platforms for that long and suddenly pull it at the last minute. They should have either dumbed down the graphics or played it safe from the start, not seek to get more profit by marketing to systems that they aren’t sure their game can handle. And I agree, not sure how they didn’t have an idea how it would handle in the first place, shouldn’t they have tested that sort of thing with something akin to a benchmark ages ago?
Admittedly this is a shitty situation but the reality is they were trying to get this “next-gen” game to run on almost 10 year old hardware! If I were the game designer and was given the choice of having to strip back features to make it work on old hardware or maintaining the original vision of the game I’d set out to make I would cut off the 360/PS3 version to maintain that vision to provide the best experience possible. Also saying they are pulling at the last minute is pretty extreme, the game isn’t out for another 3 months….
Im not sure what to make of this,i work at ebgames so i checked into our emails to see if we had recieved any information on the retail end. unfortunately (or maybe positively?) There was no information regarding dying light at all.
Exactly…they intend it to be “next gen” they should have realised it was a fallacy to intend to release on old systems from the start, espeically with the option to run tests as I mentioned. I would do the same as yourself, but wouldn’t bother trying to market to older systems in the first place as soon as I knew that was the game’s vision. Well maybe 3 months seems like a long time to yourself but I have pre-ordered games a year before they intend to release them, pre-ordering is a big element of games retail. Although yes I suppose “last minute” was probably a bit exetreme. I agree with you, it is a shitty situation, but it is one that could have been avoided easily if this is geniunly the case.
This is pathetic you scum bags aren’t getting any more of my money.