Fez 2 not coming out for Xbox consoles

Developer Phil Fish has revealed in an interview with Polygon that his upcoming game, Fez 2, will not be on Xbox consoles.

Fish and his company have had a spotty relationship with the Xbox 360 and original Fez. Polytron released a patch to fix certain bugs in the game in 2012, but the patch corrupted certain save files, which led to Microsoft pulling the patch completely. The developer did not pay for a second certification fee, and left the patch as is. Fish wrote on his blog (emphasis by Fish), "It's a [horrid] numbers game to be playing for sure, but as a small independent, paying so much money for patches makes no sense at all."

Fish shared more details about Fez 2. Rich Vreeland will be doing the music for the game. He also said that Fez 2 is an entirely new game. "Fez 2 is to Fez 1 what Zelda 2 was to Zelda 1, but more different. The biggest reason is that I just wanted to go back to that world. I want to expand on my little world and its mythology. It's not a case of wanting to recycle ideas we didn't get to put in Fez 1. Since the games are going to be so different, there's not a whole lot that could just carry over."

Fish also shared his two cents on the Xbox One just before its policy change: "I hope it's a joke. I hope Microsoft is pulling a New Coke on us, announcing a [bad] console nobody wants, only to eventually announce the Xbox Classic and winning back everybody's hearts. Microsoft is making a console for itself. Not for gamers. Not for developers. Just for its own, greedy little Orwellian self. I'm not interested."

After the change, he still hasn't shifted his opinion. "They didn't change anything about their anti-indie policies." When asked about the PS4, he was happy with how Sony is doing everything. "It's too early to tell how everything is going to unfold, but their heart definitely seems to be in the right place. Which is a weird thing to say when talking about a giant monolithic corporation, but there's a handful of people working at Sony today who are really trying to do some good."