You might not have heard of it, but KEMURI is a new game from a small studio known as "UNSEEN", led by a former artist and director at Tango Gameworks for the likes of The Evil Within and Ghostwire Tokyo called Ikumi Nakamura.
Nakamura was asked in a recent Q&A about why KEMURI isn't coming to Xbox (but is coming to PC, PS5 and maybe Switch 2), and her comments have been generating a negative reaction on social media over the past 24 hours. The way she words her explanation isn't the best, but we do actually sympathise with the overall message behind it.
Basically, she says the new studio is very small, and there are no "dedicated people" to handle ports to different platforms - unlike in a big company. Therefore, she doesn't want to put too much pressure on her team.
Here's the full transcription though - you might see why people are taking issue with certain aspects of it:
"I just want people to understand that porting takes a lot of work. We develop the game for PC first, then bringing it to Nintendo or PlayStation requires engineers to handle the port work. At a big company, you usually have dedicated people to handle that. But we are really a small studio, if we had to do the porting ourselves, our engineers would be exhausted. I'd rather prioritise people's lives. I don't want anyone dying just to release an Xbox version. People come first. That's all."
Some people are going on the offensive for her comments that suggest an Xbox version would be overly difficult compared to PC, PS5 and Switch 2, but ultimately it does make sense that UNSEEN would prioritise those versions.
It probably would have come across better for Nakamura to state that an Xbox version isn't going to attract the level of attention that the PC, PlayStation and Nintendo versions are, and therefore she's decided that it's not worth the amount of exhaustion that it'll cause her team. Basically the same message, just worded a little differently.
Anyway, let's not forget that Xbox's next console — Project Helix — will be able to play PC games when it arrives, and with KEMURI slated for 2027 as things stand, there's a good chance we'll be able to check it out soon after launch on an "Xbox" console regardless. Here's hoping it's so successful that they'll be able to make a native Xbox version too!
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.purexbox.com/news/2026/09/kemuri-dev-says-its-too-exhausting-to-release-an-xbox-version-and-we-do-actually-sympathise
