Dark Souls 2 may well be coming to the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. A listing on Tesco Direct, the website of the retail giant, lists the RPG coming to the next generation consoles in December. No official word about a port to other platforms has been given from either Namco Bandai or From Software so the listing may not be 100% accurate, though many upcoming games have previously been leaked by retail chains listing them on their online stores.
The developer has previously spoken about the possibility of the insanely difficult RPG coming to next generation consoles. In an interview with EDGE, From Software revealed that they hadn’t ruled out porting the game to the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in the future. Yiu Tanimura, co-director of the Dark Souls 2 spoke about how the team just hadn’t gotten round to discussing whether they would bring the game to other platforms.
A programmer for the game also revealed to IGN how the team had built the game with next generation hardware in mind. During development of Dark Souls 2 the creators experimented with new techniques in anticipation of working with future technology. The programmer went on to say: “We always had in mind the next generation, such as DirectX11 and next generation hardware when creating our technology, and also challenged ourselves as programmers to simultaneously create for the new generation.” This would suggest that From Software should be capable of bringing the game to the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 without too much difficulty.
The game originally launched in March of this year for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, with a PC release following in April. Although it is a sequel to the original Dark Souls it doesn’t have a follow-on story and is not directly linked with its predecessor. It does however share many of the gameplay features and traits from the first title. Dark Souls 2 does have some important changes though, such as the fact that enemies no longer spawn indefinitely and the fact that player health reduces after every death.