Developer of theSTALKERseries, GSC Game World, has stated in an interview thatSTALKER 2will not be making its way to PS4 or Xbox One any time soon. The main reason given by GSC Game World was that it did not wantSTALKER 2to be limited by the hardware of older generation consoles.
It has been a long time since GSC Game World released a game in theSTALKERseries, with the most recent installment,Call of Pripyat,coming out in 2010 for everyone outside of the CIS region. The 11-year gap between titles has madeSTALKER 2highly anticipated by fans, especially considering its original release date of 2012, and its subsequent cancellation the same year.STALKER 2was announced once again in 2018 with a new release date of 2021, and a further announcement that it would make its way to consoles, specifically the Xbox Series X/S.
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This is the first time that a game in theSTALKERseries is being brought to consoles, and many fans with last-gen consoles have likely had their hopes dashed recently, as GSC Game World has stated that “STALKER 2is a next-gen game, and it’s impossible to run it on Xbox One or PS4.” While many other titles are being released as cross-generation, the developers ofSTALKER 2seem fairly adamant that they do not want to be held back by creating a game that runs on the previous generation.
While owners of previous generation consoles may be disappointed by this announcement, it does mean that for next-gen and PC owners, the game will likely be designed to run more optimally. GSC Game World has confirmed thatSTALKER 2will run on 4K on Xbox Series X, with HDR support for both the Series X and S. Ray-tracing will also be able to be utilized by PC players with capable hardware, and GSC is claiming a steady 120 FPS on Xbox Series X.
As new generation consoles come onto the market, the sorts of trade-offs developers and publishers are having to make are becoming more evident. One of the major reasonsbehindCyberpunk 2077’sissueswas its release onto previous generation consoles, when the game clearly wasn’t a polished product on the Xbox One and PS4, and many developers are likely looking to this as an example to avoid. With the anticipation forSTALKER 2rising as the game nears its vague release date of “late 2021,” fans may be disappointed by its lack of release onto previous-gen consoles, but they can at least breathe a sigh of relief that GSC Game World is taking the game’s stability into consideration.
STALKER 2is currently in development for PC and Xbox Series X/S
