No Rest for the Wicked Developer Points Finger at Series S for Xbox Launch Delay

The Xbox Series S is back in the crosshairs after comments from the founder of Moon Studio, the developer behind action RPG No Rest for the Wicked, which has been in Steam Early Access since 2024.

During the PlayStation State of Play, it was confirmed that the game would hit PS5 this October with its 1.0 release, but Xbox players will have to wait. This isn't due to a marketing deal with PlayStation; instead, it's tied to limitations of the Xbox Series S. Responding to a fan asking about the missing Xbox release date, studio founder and game director Thomas Mahler pointed to the console.

"Series S is making that rough," Mahler said in a Discord comment. "We'll ship it after in a good way once it's optimized like crazy for Switch 2 and Xbox."

Another user joked that a mobile version would follow the Xbox and Switch 2 versions, to which Mahler replied: "Series S and mobile specs aren't too far apart at this point."

This isn't the first time such issues have arisen. The Xbox version of Black Myth: Wukong was delayed by a year, with heavy rumors pointing to development difficulties on the console. Microsoft initially denied knowledge of such troubles, but developer Game Science later suggested the rumors had some truth. In January 2025, Game Science CEO Yongar Feng-Ji noted that the Xbox Series S's 10 GB of shared memory was causing optimization problems. When the game finally launched on Xbox, the studio confirmed the delay was due to extra time spent optimizing specifically for the platform.

Baldur's Gate 3 also faced challenges with the Xbox Series S. The game had a staggered release, arriving on PC in August 2023, PS5 in September, and Xbox in December. Larian struggled to get split-screen co-op working smoothly on the Series S, even enlisting help from Microsoft's engineers.

These incidents have sparked ongoing debate about whether the Xbox Series S is worth the trouble. Microsoft requires all Xbox Series X titles to also work on Series S with full feature parity, leading to some games launching later on the platform. This raises questions about Project Helix, the next Xbox console: will it have a cheaper, weaker variant, or will Microsoft go all-in on a single SKU? Given the aggressive stance of Xbox's new CEO Asha Sharma, it's hard to imagine the company doing two consoles again, but only time will tell.

For now, No Rest for the Wicked will launch on PS5 in October (exact date TBA), while the Xbox release date remains unconfirmed.