Major Moonglow Bay Xbox Update Arrives April 7!

It’s been a while since we’ve provided an update on what’s happening with Moonglow Bay on Xbox. Before we do, we want to sincerely apologise for the time it’s taken to get something out to all of you.

We completely acknowledge communication hasn’t been good enough throughout the process, and there are a number of reasons for that which we’ll get into momentarily, but we just want you to know that we’ve been reading your comments, responding where we can, and to assure you we remain committed to fixing as many of these issues as we can.

On that note, the good news is that you will be able to download a major update for Moonglow Bay across all Xbox platforms from April 7th 2022!

For now, we wanted to break down some of the challenges we’ve been experiencing and to give you some context on how it has affected the development process…

So, what’s been the hold up?

As you know, there are extensive screen tearing and performance issues on the Xbox version of the game and they had a more substantial impact than on other formats. Getting a build into a more stable state, to a level of quality we are all happy with, has taken much longer than we would have hoped. As this was the main issue we were seeing from the community, this is where our focus has been and we’ve been spending time trying to get this right. 

Our working theory for this is that it’s a memory issue. Because of the quality of the assets within the game and the amount of activity during any one scene, the settings were very high which can cause systems to run out of RAM. What you received at launch was not the standard and quality we wanted for our players, which is why we’ve been working daily on a variety of solutions to address it.

Similarly, because the game is running on Xbox One, Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X, builds on each platform have represented their own individual challenges. Due to Moonglow Bay being on Xbox Game Pass, the level of quality needs to match across all platforms in order for builds to pass quality control, then be pushed out to all of you.

We have made progress and improvements on this front and this will be reflected in our latest patch. Unfortunately, however, there is still work to be done which will take more time. So we’re announcing today there will be additional patches coming to Moonglow Bay across Xbox platforms in the future. Releasing these will enable us to achieve the full standard of quality we want for all of our players. 

As such, some of the issues you’re experiencing may not necessarily be fixed in this upcoming update, though it will contain most of the implementations you’ve seen on Steam and the Epic Games Store, such as auto-saving, the ‘help, I’m stuck feature’, control rebinding, as well as key fixes related to performance and progression. Be sure to take a look at the full patch notes to see exactly what’s been fixed once the patch goes live.

While there are still fixes to come, the main issues that remain are graphical and performance based, though you should notice improvements to both of these when you download the latest update.

Why didn’t you release smaller patches in multiple stages?

As mentioned above, we wanted to focus on the performance issues affecting Xbox players and that has always been our priority. Other fixes have come to other formats in the meantime and as we’ve said from the beginning, those fixes will be made available on Xbox as well. 

We wanted parity for all of our players and for you to have access to those updates at the same time as Steam and Epic Games Store players. However, because performance was uniquely affected on Xbox platforms compared to other formats, different work had to be done, which meant all platforms were at different stages of development.

To add to that, unfortunately, we encountered further issues with the state of the Xbox builds throughout the patching process which would have actually made the experience worse for players! These did not pass our own internal quality standards and would not have been acceptable to release. 

As work has continued over time, linked elements available on other formats became more deeply intertwined in unique ways through the state of the Xbox builds. So, inevitably, this would have made it near impossible to release them separately in smaller updates as much as we all would have loved to have done so. 

We cannot say this worked out for the best and we deeply regret the situations many of our players have found themselves in, unable to play due to being stuck or because there was no autosave for extended periods. Unfortunately, because of the type of work already put into the patches, we found ourselves in a situation where providing key features prior to the release of a larger update was no longer possible.

The new update does go a long way to ensuring your progress can continue in Moonglow Bay and we hope you’ll now be able to ‘unstick’ characters and progress through some of the scenarios and issues you’ve been having difficulty with. That said, there is still work to be done. 

Rest assured, we are continuing to listen to your feedback and if, after this update, you’re still having issues, please do let us know what’s happening via Discord or Social Media. 

We will strive to provide a more concrete timeline for future patch releases as work continues and will be sure to let you know when any outstanding issues are likely to be fixed and what those updates look like.

Thank you for continuing to be patient and supportive throughout this process. We are all truly sorry for the issues you’ve experienced and we hope this update goes some way to helping you continue your adventures in the way that we orginally intended.

We also want to take a moment to say thank you for all the streams, sentiments, and contributions you’ve all made to the community, we greatly appreciate every single one.

We hope to catch you in the Bay very soon!