Dying Light now next generation only

In a letter to fans today Techland announced that they will not be releasing their upcoming zombie game Dying Light for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.  Techland cites the difficulty of getting the game to run at their standards on last generation hardware as the reason for the change.  This means that the game will only be available for PC, PlayStation 4, and the Xbox One.

I guess this comes as no real surprise given how complex the game was and it seems like Techland just didn't want to invest the effort into a version of the game that didn't meet their vision of the game which is totally understandable.  

Part of me thinks does that there is a spreadsheet somewhere where the cost to finish the game for last generation consoles is in one cell and in another cell is the projected revenue from the copies of the PS3/Xbox 360 versions of the game but that's just the project manager in me.  Either way the game does look really good from what we saw at E3 earlier this year and you'll be able to play the game on January 27, 215.

Dear Gamers,

As you probably know, we’re wrapping up the development of Dying Light, our biggest and most ambitious project to date. We spent the last three years making sure that all the features of our game add up to create a truly next-gen experience.

Much of this “next-gen feel” is tightly connected to the technological side of Dying Light. For instance, up to 200,000 objects can be displayed in the game at once. Add to this our use of realistic, physics-based lighting technology and you really start to push the next-gen systems to the limits. Features like these along with our core gameplay pillars – such as the player-empowering Natural Movement, threefold character development system, and vast open world – are all an inherent part of how Dying Light plays. However, combining all of these into one fluid experience is only possible on technologically advanced platforms.

Therefore, after thorough internal testing, we have come to the conclusion that we have no choice but to leave past-gen systems behind and release Dying Light exclusively on the next-gen consoles and PC. Put simply, older consoles just couldn’t run the game and stay true to the core vision of Dying Light at the same time.

To ensure you enjoy Dying Light as much as we would like you to, we chose to release it without any compromises on the three strongest systems available. Thanks to this, you’ll get the full and best experience regardless of the platform you play on.

We hope you understand the hard choice we’ve had to make. With the launch just around the corner, we can’t wait to show you Dying Light in the state it was meant to be. We’re looking forward to your reactions and impressions as we release the game in January 2015.