Furi Creators Explained Why the Onnamusha DLC Won't Be Coming to Xbox
The Game Bakers explained why Furi will not be updated on Xbox saying that the main reasons for that are a small development team and poor sales on the platform.
On May 3, The Game Bakers, the French studio responsible for titles like Haven and Squids Odyssey which is best known within the indie space thanks to its action shoot 'em up game Furi, announced it would be releasing Onnamusha, the major DLC for Furi. Along with the add-on, the developer will release a major free update for the game, which will include all previously released additions and improvements.
The game originally came out in 2016 on PC and PS4, at the end of that year it was also launched on Xbox One, and in 2018, the game was released for Nintendo Switch. The new DLC will come out on May 17 and will be available on all the platforms except Xbox.
The fact that the release of the update and Onnamusha DLC will not take place on Xbox has disappointed many console owners. The Game Bakers took to Twitter to respond to the fans of the game explaining the reasons for this decision.
"We have heard all of you who played Furi on Xbox and we understand your frustration. We are a small indie team and we couldn’t find the time and budget to make that port," the developer wrote, adding that Furi has never been quite popular on the platform and saying that it hopes to return to Xbox releases someday in the future.
The studio also gave a detailed commentary on the matter to Vice, noting that The Game Bakers team consists of only 12 people, so the studio could not find enough time and funds to update the game for the Xbox as well.
The Game Bakers co-founders and president Audrey Leprince revealed that releasing an add-on for Furi is not as easy a task as it might seem. The developers not only added a new character, skills, and challenges to the game, but also updated the engine, SDK, middleware, and fully tested builds on all platforms.
Leprince also pointed out that the studio doesn't work with a publisher, so it wouldn't be able to promote the updated version of Furi and DLC on the main page of the Microsoft Store. "Being self-published is a different exercise than having a publisher for sure. It gives us a lot of independence creatively at least. But each game also requires a lot of business development and partnerships," he said.
"We talked to the team at Xbox to see if there was a way to get some support, but Furi didn’t align with the Game Pass strategy focused on new titles," Leprince shared. "This is why we took the decision not to bring the DLC to Xbox at launch: the chances the investment was not going to recoup were high."
The Game Bakers also provided the charts which show that the sales of Furi on the Xbox gradually declined and began to be less than a third of the figure on the Nintendo Switch.
Leprince, however, noted that he hopes that the new DLC will show good results on other platforms and if this happens, the developers will be able to release the DLC on the Xbox in the near future.
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