Contrast may come to Xbox One, ran on PS4 first, says dev

Film noire platformer Contrast may come to Xbox One in the future, developer Compulsion Games' Sam Abbott told Polygon.

According to Abbott, a Xbox One port won't be possible in the immediate future — currently all of the indie studio's four programmers are busy polishing versions for Windows PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and Xbox 360.

"We would need one programmer to free up to do [an Xbox One port]," he said. "When we started talking about exploring console opportunities, we knew we needed publisher support if we were going to get there. So we had to focus on PC [during pitching]."

Abbott added that the PS4 version of Contrast was up and running before all other versions. Porting to PS4, and to an extent PS3, was "substantially earlier" than doing so for Xbox 360.

"You don't have to significantly optimize it [between PC and PS4,]" he said. "The architecture is much simpler — it's not trivial to do it, but it takes a lot less time."

Prior to Microsoft's announcement that indies would be able to self-publish on the Xbox One, Compulsion wasn't even considering the port. But since the announcement, porting to the next-gen console is the "lead contender for the next port." Abbott also noted that a PlayStation Vita port could be possible, but it's not on the table right now.

Once the company's programmers finish the game, in addition to the Xbox One port, Abbott said the company will explore possible DLC options for the game. He also noted that he is no longer certain whether Contrast will launch for Mac and Linux, despite previous reports that it would. Abbott said Compulsion would like to make ports for these systems, but the console versions are currently the priority.

"You could say we originally designed Contrast as a console game," he said.

Compulsion Games is aiming to launch Contrast on Windows PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, alongside the PS4 this November.