Phantom Blade Zero Studio Denies Controversial Xbox Comments

Highlights

S-GAME has distanced itself from some recent anti-Xbox comments attributed to one of its staffers.
The company said that it’s committed to making its games as accessible as possible, adding that it hasn’t yet ruled out the possibility of a Phantom Blade Zero Xbox port.
A playable demo of Phantom Blade Zero will be featured at Gamescom 2024 in late August.

Phantom Blade Zero developer S-GAME has distanced itself from some anti-Xbox comments that were recently attributed to one of its staffers. In doing so, the company even suggested that an Xbox port of Phantom Blade Zero could still be on the cards.

An August 3 report from Brazilian website GamePlaysCassi claimed that one of Phantom Blade Zero developers said “nobody needs” Xbox. The quote was attributed to an unnamed S-GAME staffer, who supposedly said it during the recently concluded ChinaJoy 2024 expo in late July. The official allegedly made that remark in response to a question about why the studio decided to have Phantom Blade Zero skip Xbox. Elaborating on that point, the developer reportedly said that Microsoft’s consoles aren’t popular in Asia and that their latest generation significantly complicates development on account of comprising two distinct consoles. The comments quickly made the rounds online, stirring quite a bit of controversy among the Xbox fandom.

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Phantom Blade Zero Dev Says It’s Not Anti-Xbox

A day later, S-GAME issued an official statement that saw it distance itself from those remarks. While the studio didn’t outright deny that someone from the company might have indeed made those comments at ChinaJoy 2024, it said that their underlying sentiment does not match with its “values or culture.” Rather than having an aversion to Xbox, the Phantom Blade Zero developer said that it’s currently “hard at work” on making its upcoming action RPG as accessible as possible. To that end, the Chinese studio has not ruled out any future ports of the game, including a potential Xbox version.

These comments match some of the company’s previous statements that saw it reveal it does not have an exclusivity deal with Sony even though Phantom Blade Zero will be a PS5 console exclusive at launch. The samurai ARPG will also be available on PC from day one. Although Phantom Blade Zero is still without a concrete release window, its developer just confirmed that it plans to bring its playable demo to the 2024 edition of Gamescom, which runs from August 21 to 25. Since the ARPG’s marketing is now clearly ramping up, a 2025 release seems to be well within the realm of possibility.

Although S-GAME does not want to be dragged into debates about the pros and cons of supporting Xbox, not all gamemakers are as neutral as the Chinese studio. E.g., it was only recently that Remedy Entertainment said that the Xbox Series S is indeed a problem for developers due to its hardware limitations that must be accounted for from the very beginning of any given production.

Phantom Blade Zero

Phantom Blade Zero is a new character action game from developer S-Game that features the type of fast-paced combo-based gameplay popularized by series like Ninja Gaiden and Devil May Cry. Its art style combines traditional Japanese iconography with the fantastical and horrific.

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