Grim Dawn was officially announced for Xbox One roughly two years after the acclaimed action role-playing game was released on PC. Since then, two more years have passed and while the Xbox One port remains without a release date, developer Crate Entertainment has refrained from committing to additional consoles such as PlayStation 4. The developer has now explained just why.
Speaking with SegmentNext in a recent interview, game designer Kamil “Zantai” Marczewski explained that the main appeal of Xbox One lies with a similar architecture to PC. Since Grim Dawn was first developed for PC, working on an Xbox One port was the next obvious step to take. In addition, Microsoft was “eager” to work with Crate Entertainment to bring Grim Dawn to Xbox One, making the whole process even better.
That being said, Marczewski noted that other console ports have not been ruled out. They will though, increase development time since in the case of a Nintendo Switch port, Grim Dawn will “require some concessions” in regards to the limiting hardware.
The main appeal of an Xbox port is how similar the architecture already is compared to PC. It helped that Microsoft was eager to work with us. While we’re not ruling out other console ports, they would significantly increase the development time, so we’re not ready to announce other ports. A Nintendo Switch version would probably require some concessions to be made in order for the game to run on that system.
Grim Dawn was developed for PC first, so that is where our expertise lies. That said, the Xbox architecture is much more similar to a PC now than it used to be in past generations, so it wasn’t a completely foreign endeavor. Consoles do come with their own rules for releasing products though, so certification became a major step in getting the game out.
Elsewhere in the interview, Marczewski confirmed that Grim Dawn will continue to receive updates and content releases. Crate Entertainment though, has also started thinking about the future and that includes Grim Dawn 2.
Marczewski stated that Crate Entertainment has been working on multiple new projects. However, none of those include Grim Dawn 2. The developer appears to be at the conceptual phase of development and while a sequel is being considered, actual development of Grim Dawn 2 has not begun.
