Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One developer Frogwares has announced that while the PS4 version of the game is still on track for an April 28 release, the Xbox One version has been put on indefinite hiatus.
Due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the studio was forced to prioritize development of the PS4 version and is now offering a full refund to anyone who pre-ordered the game on Xbox One.
“We had to make a difficult decision regarding the Xbox One version of the game. Due to circumstances beyond our control, the Xbox One version of Chapter One has been postponed indefinitely,” Frogwares said in a statement. “To say that the war had an impact on us is probably the understatement of the decade. Keeping our personal and mental situation out of it, the war had a huge impact on us from a production standpoint.”
Ukraine-based Frogwares added that optimizing the previous generation versions of the Sherlock Holmes prequel was a bigger task than the studio originally anticipated. A lot of “invisible work” was done to ensure the game ran smoothly on older consoles, which included visible changes to the city map by cutting off certain alleys and shortcuts.
Since the war in Ukraine began, the country has asked PlayStation, Xbox and esports organizations to stop supporting Russia. Multiple movie studios have stopped releasing new movies in Russia, Apple no longer sells any products there, and the gaming industry has banded together to provide humanitarian aid to Ukraine.
If you’d like to help with the relief efforts, we’ve put together a list of humanitarian organizations like the Ukrainian Red Cross and UNICEF that you can donate to.
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