In a lengthy statement, the developer and publisher of XIII have sworn to correct the issues players have seen at launch for the game. The remake was highly anticipated among the cult classic's fanbase, but since it arrived on November 10, XIII has been a lightning rod for criticism due to a multitude of issues.
Together, publisher Microids and developer Playmagic have said they "hear loud and clear the legitimate criticism and disappointment" and admitted "XIII does not meet our quality standards and we fully understand players’ frustrations."
You can read the full statement below.
Greetings,
The highly anticipated remake of XIII, awaited by many fans, came out earlier this week. Unfortunately, players expectations have not been met by the launch version and we hear loud and clear the legitimate criticism and disappointment.
First and foremost, we would like to offer our most sincere apologies for the game’s technical issues. In its present state, XIII does not meet our quality standards and we fully understand players’ frustrations. The pandemic has impacted the game’s production on many levels. Pivoting to home working for the teams has added unexpected delays in the development schedule and the QA process. We hoped we would be able to provide a Day One patch fixing all the issues but the development of this update is taking more time than expected.
We want to assure you that PlayMagic is working hard to solve all the game’s issues. With live monitoring and multiple patches in the upcoming days and weeks, we hope to reach the quality level we all expect for the optimum gaming experience. The first update will be pushed shortly to fix the most urgent issues regarding the controls, frame rate, collisions, rendering and sound. For information about the upcoming patches, please follow this link: https://www.microids.com/xiii-patch-notes/
In addition, we wanted to thank the community for all the feedback. We are reviewing every single comment carefully, passing along the bugs and issues to the development team. Feel free to send us your feedback and questions to: support_XIII@microids.com
Finally, know that we are working on a detailed road map highlighting the upcoming free additions to the game content like new levels, weapons, skins and modes for the local multiplayer.
We are aiming to please all the XIII fans and we’ll work relentlessly to achieve our goal.
The teams at Microids and PlayMagic
Only seven critics on OpenCritic have reviewed XIII to date, perhaps it launched alongside the new consoles but isn't available on them, so attention went elsewhere. But then again, maybe it's for the best. The seven reviews submitted so far have averaged only a 33 on OpenCritic, making it one of the lowest-scoring games of the year, with its highest score being a 6 out of 10. Out of 642 eligible games (released in 2020 with at least five scored reviews), XIII's aggregate score ranks 639th.
It's a steep hill to climb, but at least the team behind the game is saying all the right things for now. Hopefully they can get the game to where it needs to be to honor the original's legacy and give the fans what they expected.
