Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is headed to old-gen platforms. During the Q1 2024 earnings call, EA confirmed that developer Respawn Entertainment is in the early stages of developing dedicated versions for the PS4 and Xbox One. The Cal Kestis-led (Cameron Monaghan) galaxy-spawning adventure originally launched in April, but entirely skipped previous generations — akin to other major publishers, who’ve been leaning toward the newer consoles for ease in optimisation and being able to render the visuals to the highest quality they desire. Currently, there’s no release window, though when it eventually drops on older systems, will be an interesting testing bench to see how much visual fidelity the game sacrificed to run at minimum 30fps on a hard drive.
“Our team at Respawn proudly launched this title [Star Wars Jedi: Survivor] to critical acclaim and commercial success. Millions of players have already engaged with the game, making this one of the biggest events in the Star Wars galaxy this year,” CEO Andrew Wilson said during the call. “Thanks to the strength of this legendary franchise and community demand, our development team has committed to bringing this Jedi experience to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.” The company credited the game and the FIFA 23 ecosystem — soon to be EA Sports FC — as the major proponents of its record-breaking first quarter. Its net bookings for the quarter were $1.58 billion (about Rs. 13,021 crore), up by 21 percent YoY.
That said, the existing version on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S/X isn’t being abandoned, with Respawn continuing to work on ‘additional improvements’ for better performance. While Star Wars Jedi: Survivor opened to rave reviews — crediting its story and intricate level design — the game delivered poorly on the performance front, especially on PC, causing choppy and inconsistent framerates even during interior segments with barely any movement. The console versions weren’t devoid of those issues either, but it was nowhere close to its state on PC, leading to the game being bombarded with negative reviews on Steam, at launch. The studio has since been releasing patches in a timely manner to gradually bring it to a smoother experience. At the time, Respawn kind of blamed running Windows 10 on newer CPUs as the cause for performance issues, which to my knowledge has never posed downsides on any other game.
Earlier this month, a pair of job listings reportedly appeared on EA’s careers portal for Star Wars Jedi, indicating that a sequel might already be in development. One of them was for the role of a Senior VFX Artist, specifically for Star Wars Jedi, while the other was a listing for a Senior Combat Designer for the ‘Star Wars Team.’ Experience working on Unreal Engine 4 — maybe even UE5 — was a big plus for anyone applying for the role. This aligns with game director Stig Asmussen’s comments from March, where he admitted that he wanted Jedi Knight Cals’ journey to branch out as a trilogy. He further claimed that discussions for potential sequels were happening internally before even 2019’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order came out and that the third game would most likely be built using Unreal Engine 5.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is out on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S/X. Currently, there is no release window for the old-gen version.