Dying Light: The Beast gives up on old consoles

The technical barriers imposed by outdated hardware forced the developer to make a drastic yet understandable decision. The Polish studio Techland has officially confirmed the cancellation of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions of their next project, Dying Light: The Beast. As production progressed in the offices, engineers realized that trying to squeeze the title onto the old devices would require painful cuts to gameplay and visuals. It's always disappointing to see part of the community left behind, but insisting on consoles released over a decade ago only serves to hold back the evolution of games, resulting in subpar and poorly optimized final products.

To ease the impact of this bad news for those who were expecting the release, the producer issued a public apology for the disappointment and assured that all players affected by the change of plans will be entitled to request a refund of their investment. On the other hand, there is good news for gamers in the Microsoft ecosystem: since the game will be available on the cloud service xCloud through personal library streaming, owners of Xbox One will still be able to enjoy the gameplay via streaming. This smart alternative shows respect for the community, offering a modern solution to bypass the physical console's obsolescence.

"Bringing the game to these platforms would require compromises that would prevent us from delivering the experience we intended to create," the company explained in a statement.

The project's scope was designed from the very first drafts to harness the full potential of contemporary machines. The creative team explained that constructing the integrated open world, advanced graphic effects, melee combat physics, and the dynamic parkour system demands a memory bandwidth and processing speed that the old eighth-generation consoles simply cannot provide. The difficult decision to focus solely on the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and high-end PCs is the right choice to ensure the final product reaches the market without the constraints of the past.