Fans hoping to play H1Z1 on consoles will have to wait a bit longer as developer Daybreak Games has announced that they are pausing development on the console versions to focus on its upcoming PC launch. Producer Chris Wynn said in a blog post that because H1Z1: King of the Hill is leaving Steam Early Access on September 20, the company will be focusing all of their efforts on that version of the game in order to ensure that they fix any issues that they come across and polish the title as much as possible. Daybreak is committed to releasing a high-quality experience, and they felt it was best to delay H1Z1 on Xbox One and PlayStation 4.
“We were just as excited as our players with the idea of King of the Kill on their PS4 or Xbox One. As we started to execute against that plan, it became apparent that the schedule was just too risky. We were spread too thin trying to fix areas of the game while simultaneously getting the game to work on the console hardware. It became clear that to best line up the game for success was to reduce the number of variables in the equation,” Wynn said.
Because of this decision, Daybreak has already made essential updates to gunplay, combat, and vehicles, and got the new map in a state to go live. They want that same, updated experience to launch on consoles when it is ready, and they do not want to sacrifice quality by rushing it.
Wynn couldn’t promise an exact release date, but he said that Daybreak would turn their attention back to the console versions of H1Z1 after King of the Hill leaves Steam Early Access. They will keep fans up-to-date on the progress through more producer’s updates as well as posts on Twitter and Reddit.
Source: H1Z1
Jennifer is a games journalist, former games journalist and PR Manager at Gearbox. They contributed 234 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: went on to write for Windows Central and later managed PR for Gearbox Software.