Black Myth: Wukong Controversy - Sony Exclusivity or Xbox Tech Issues?

okay so next news story this one's quite bizarre obviously black myth Wukong released uh exclusively in console and on PlayStation 5 there have been various stories going around as to why it hasn't appeared on Xbox series consoles and um there was kind of like an oblique statement from Microsoft given to I think jez Cordon of Windows Central stating that well kind of implying heavily that a deal had been made between Sony and game science um and that is one of the reasons why it was locked out on Xbox consoles then a competing story emerged online which I got to admit I looked at it and didn't see any creditable sources but it seemed to spread regardless suggesting that um I'm sort of chuckling just to describe this one uh saying that the Xbox version had been delayed indefinitely because of a memory leak uh which is basically a bug in the code which can be addressed and if game science couldn't do that then Microsoft has the Advanced Technology Group on hand to help out with issues exactly like this and there's the concepts that you know who would actually leak this because it could only be Microsoft who wouldn't leak it or it could be game science who you know doesn't sound right there has been talk about optimization problems for Xbox which I think has um bearing in mind they need to make a series s version of an extremely demanding game probably has more credibility to it um but John I'm going to go to you on this one to see whether you can provide any insights on this because um well bottom line is the game launched on PlayStation 5 and it didn't launch on Xbox and we're still not clear as to when an Xbox version is going to appear and why it was delayed yeah so I feel like there's probably kernels of Truth buried within all of these stories uh although I don't think memory leak is specifically valid by any means uh it's very like true that they're struggling to get this game running on Series S uh as we know this is Unreal Engine 5 version 5.0 I believe this is like original Unreal Engine 5 which is extremely heavy uh and things there's been a lot of performance improvements in then but obviously when you're making a game you got to lock down your version of unreal at some point right during the development process you can't keep integrating the changes into the project so I get why that happen but still getting this on Series S is probably a big deal I do not believe that there's any sort of necessarily marketing deal per se with Sony like where it's like oh we are spending x amount of money to keep this game off Xbox I highly doubt that that's the case but what I would imagine is that there there could be more of a uh it it I've gathered that Sony provided and Microsoft is doing the same by the way uh resources to help get this game working on PlayStation 5 and there's a very real possibility that through those relations that they may have uh come to an agreement regarding release timings and such with the console versions that perhaps you know it's like what if they said oh well we'll release this game we'll schedule our release date for when all versions are ready versus well we have PC and PS5 ready uh we can launch now and then just get Xbox later kind of thing right because if this was actually like a real marketing deal you don't think you would see game science or anyone going around saying oh yeah it's coming to Xbox oh yeah you know like that just there's been no push from Sony's side on that front really like it doesn't it doesn't work as a typical like money hat kind of situation so I think it's probably just there's there's probably some relationship stuff going on in there so there probably is something in place but not in that traditional method or that traditional model and then on top of that they probably very realistically are having troubles bringing it to Series S and maybe even series X because let's face it clearly they had troubles bringing it to PS5 it does not work well on the PS5 uh and unreal has traditionally based on I mean I think in our testing we've seen unreal games typically favor PS5 I guess it's kind of split though uh yeah I mean you know it it varies it can vary it varies from Project to project but either way uh getting this on any console is a big task and something like Series S is very likely proving extremely challenging given the demands of this so much so rich that you actually went and did some tests to sort of try to prove this out didn't you yeah I mean basically um we have our Frankenstein's PC as Alex likes to call it which is the Xbox series X CPU paired with a GPU that's very close to the PlayStation 5 um and let's start with that actually because um the introduction to black myth Wukong it's extraordinarily challenging um so what I've done here is to uh stack up the PlayStation 5 in Balance mode which has a 45 FPS cap for some reason um with a PC that's configured with pretty much the same settings which is effectively the high setting but it does have like medium/ low textures on PS5 for some reason anyway you can see here that this is an extremely demanding game and you can see that the PC version basically runs about the same or anything from up to 10% slower on the PC which is not usual typically the 6700 which is very close to the PS5 GPU has a higher clock so it runs about 5% faster usually but here it's like 5 to 10% slower depending on the content um so you can see here that um you've got an idea here of basically uh PC equivalent versus PlayStation 5 uh so the question is is there an Xbox Series S equivalent GPU in the PC space and the answer surprisingly enough is yes uh radon RX 5500 XT 22 compute units versus Series S 20 compute units and um similar memory bandwidth just reduce the clocks on the 5500 XT to 1420 MHz and you're at four Tera flops right and um this is what happens so um first of all I'm going to compare the um 5500 XT in Subs scaling from 720p uh to 1080p in medium settings and we're comparing it against um the PlayStation 5 running at high settings at 4K reconstructing from 1080p um and yeah you can see that there and this is with a 30 FPS cap which I think is reasonable for Series S right yeah and um yeah this is the problem that you have to begin with everything kind of looks looks fine um but then it isn't basically any kind of uh effects that requires a huge amount of bandwidth seemingly the visual effects causes problems and black myth Wukong does have a lot of visual effects there so you know overall looking at um at The Benchmark here it's it's not looking great even for a um significantly reduced paired back version of of black with Wukong um also I've got some footage here of the the wolf boss fight which Alex used extensively in the video that you did with him Oliver and um I'm using that kind of fiery power as well so there's lots of visual effects happening there it's okay it kind of just about holds up so you know bearing in mind that we saw that differential between PC and PS5 with very similar components I'd say that it's doable it's it's viable but it's going to you know you're not going to have a performance mode I don't think unless they really aggressively Hammer resolution and effects um and well you know I think it it could struggle even there and the elephant in the room here is that running on the PC well I've got an 8 gigabyte GPU and I've got 16 gigs of memory whereas the series s has got um you know 10 gigs memory total some of which is occupied so and you know in our chats with Unreal Engine developers and Series S especially with 5.0 the problem has been memory yep so I can fully believe that there is um a developmental challenge in making black myth Wukong run well on Xbox series s but I don't think it's completely out of the question that it can be done I just think it's going to be pretty aggressively compromised compared to the other versions of the game um I don't know Oliver you spent a lot of time with this what do you reckon it could definitely be pretty cut back back I I'd also look towards the PC settings here because I know that um game science is not eager to decrease those underlying visual settings too much it seems like because the PS5 from what we have tested is basically High across the board except for textures but you know you can strip out settings pretty hard you can strip out the Lumen lighting completely they have a fallback for GI they have a fallback for Reflections you can just strip it out completely they do have some ability to scale the game I mean they could just murder texture resolution like I think the question even more even more yeah it's not not ideal I think to me the question is really could they ship a good series s version I think that's tough it's also it's also a question of like the technical um not technical ability but just kind of technical familiarity with these systems CU clearly they're very talented people but like when you look at the PS5 version the real surprise to me has been apparently this supposed um Sony involvement with that porting process like why is Sony letting them ship a game or advising them or allowing them to ship a game at 45 FPS without vrr and in 120 HZ support with LFC on on PlayStation 5 that seems like something where if they're providing assistance they should at least counsel them very strongly against that right why are you shipping uh one of your headline modes with with frame I mean some of these questions are still a little bit befuddling to me maybe they just need a bit bit more assistance for Microsoft in in terms of getting those uh settings calibrated well as well for a series type console because I think they might not have the quite the right priorities when it comes to tackling consoles and compromising the visuals for a console platform yeah I think that's pretty much it I think there's a lot of competing stories out there as to why it's not happening um there's probably a kernel of Truth in in some of them but apart from the memory League I think I'm curious though from the perspective of Xbox fans how many people would be okay with them essentially shipping a very subpar Series S version just to get the game out on Xbox where you're like okay it runs okay on series X but we can't get Series S to run well it's either don't release the game or we release a bad Series S version what what would you guys what would you guys say to that uh I think people are expecting to have um features limited on Series S because it's a lower performing machine right um the question is how low can they go um and you know 1080p upscale from 720 on medium settings maybe they would aggressively cut resolution still further make it Dynamic and they could probably get their medium settings isn't that bad but obviously there are key cutbacks compared to um the visual standard set by the PlayStation 5 I think people are okay with compromises because they just you know there's a lot of people out there who aren't obsessed with right Lumen who just want to play the game uh the question is whether the fullbacks are actually good enough guess yeah i' also think it could just be a question of reducing the quality of some of those key effects like maybe the maybe you just get a furless first spot bad shaved version yeah maybe they just really destroy the resolution of some of the volumetric effects in the game that are so heavy like you say in that opening sequence maybe just kind of like strategic Cuts where the game is at its most expansive in terms that frame time budget maybe that gets you there without actually needing to to kill off like luming GI which I think a pry critical part of the visual makeup but like I mean just as a person who might review this at some point potentially yeah if the series s version is bad I mean I'm going to I'm going to hit them for that regardless of how difficult the time they may have had I mean I think that there are good series s versions and there are bad ones and certainly if they cut out Lumen GI that would indicate a game to me that's starting to not really look like Blackmouth huk Kong is supposed to look like I suspect based on the PC version so yeah I mean that would be a disappointment I think they should delay it until they can get all formats on Xbox into a reasonable state but yeah I mean it could be a pretty tough path for them like you said any final words there John I mean you know let's just solve this memory leag everything will be fine yeah I mean I hope they can pull this off because you know I actually find this kind of stuff very fascinating when you take a game that's pretty Cutting Edge and try to cram it into a lowend hardware this is yeah in a way kind of similar to the switch problem right and I love that kind of kind of stuff where developers have to make choices and decisions and and adopt certain techniques to get something that feels like a rough aimile of the original onto much less powerful Hardware so I hope they can do it and I hope that they prioritize the right things as well and I think getting the frame rate to at least be pretty stable is going to be super key and I feel like people will be more forgiving like you say of visual cutbacks on this platform because it is kind of EXP Ed uh as long as it runs smooth but hey if they can find a way to make it look close enough and run okay then that would be awesome