Techland's announced the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of Dying Light have been cancelled.
As we approach the one-year anniversary of Xbox One and PlayStation 4, we're still seeing games straddle the line between the current generation of consoles and what we've relied on for years. Dying Light was trying to pull it off, but not anymore.
Techland released a letter explaining its decision to fans, which I've published in full below:
"Dear Gamers,
As you probably know, we’re wrapping up the development of Dying Light, our biggest and most ambitious project to date. We spent the last three years making sure that all the features of our game add up to create a truly next-gen experience.
Much of this “next-gen feel” is tightly connected to the technological side of Dying Light. For instance, up to 200,000 objects can be displayed in the game at once. Add to this our use of realistic, physics-based lighting technology and you really start to push the next-gen systems to the limits. Features like these along with our core gameplay pillars – such as the player-empowering Natural Movement, threefold character development system, and vast open world – are all an inherent part of how Dying Light plays. However, combining all of these into one fluid experience is only possible on technologically advanced platforms.
Therefore, after thorough internal testing, we have come to the conclusion that we have no choice but to leave past-gen systems behind and release Dying Light exclusively on the next-gen consoles and PC. Put simply, older consoles just couldn’t run the game and stay true to the core vision of Dying Light at the same time.
To ensure you enjoy Dying Light as much as we would like you to, we chose to release it without any compromises on the three strongest systems available. Thanks to this, you’ll get the full and best experience regardless of the platform you play on.
We hope you understand the hard choice we’ve had to make. With the launch just around the corner, we can’t wait to show you Dying Light in the state it was meant to be. We’re looking forward to your reactions and impressions as we release the game in January 2015."
That sounds nice, but it's hard to imagine cutting the previous generation versions loose a few months before shipping will help the current generation versions. Decisions about Dying Light's design were made with all versions in mind years ago. We're avoiding some versions of Dying Light with bad frame rates.