Fatshark have delivered two excellent first person action games back-to-back with Warhammer: End Times – Vermintide and Warhammer: Vermintide 2, and soon, they’ll be following up on that with the upcoming Warhammer 40,000: Darktide. When it launches though, Darktide won’t be available on all platforms at once, and at launch, the game is going to be an Xbox console exclusive.
So what exactly is the reason for that? We recently got the chance to interview Fatshark, speaking with CEO Martin Wahlund, technical producer Mikael Hansson, and Darktide’s game director Anders De Geer. When asked about why the game is launching as an Xbox console exclusive, the developers expressed their satisfaction with their partnership with Microsoft (Vermintide 2 launched on Xbox One a few months before PS4, and a few months after PC), before adding that a launch on Xbox Series X/S and PC only is easier to manage than a simultaneous launch on multiple platforms.
“We have worked with Microsoft for many years, and they are a great partner,” the said. “We are very happy with what we’ve been doing together with them with Vermintide 2, so now we’re building on that and will be doing more exciting things with them in the future. Also, it’s no secret, releasing on multiple platforms takes time, and we are ensuring that we can do a simultaneous release to PC and Xbox this way.”
In the same interview, the developers also spoke about the Xbox Series S, which they feel won’t affect game development too much in spite of the gap in specs between it and the Xbox Series X. Read more on that through here.
Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is due out some time this year for Xbox Series X/S and PC. Our full interview with its developers will be going live soon, so stay tuned.