Conan Exiles Xbox One Won't Have Full Nudity
By Jasmine Henry 07 March 2017
The Xbox One release of Conan Exiles won’t feature full nudity, developer Funcom has confirmed. The PC version of the survival sandbox game, which is set to be released via the Xbox early access program, features nudity for its male and female characters but Funcom says that this will likely not make it to the Xbox One version of the game.
In an interview, the game’s creative director Joel Bylos said that Microsoft has been clear that “it’s not gonna fly” and that Sony will likely take a similar stance for the game’s PS4 release.
But the console versions of Conan Exiles may still feature “partial nudity,” says Bylos. Male characters would only be partially exposed in this case, as they would be able to go shirtless but would wear a loincloth to cover their genitalia. Likewise, female characters would still have their breasts on show. Though at this stage it’s still unclear whether the partial nudity option will be allowed in the game instead.
Bylos also revealed that Funcom was “a bit shocked at how much it took off.” Bylos suspects that it’s because Funcom didn’t hype up the feature before launch instead taking an “it’s there, and people will find it” approach but even so, the developer was still massively surprised.
While it’s understandable why Microsoft would take a stance against the bare breasts and genitalia that feature in Conan Exiles, the company’s position does seem to stand at odds with the likes of Mass Effect: Andromeda‘s so-called ‘softcore porn’. Andromeda also features full nudity (rather than partial nudity) and yet is still allowed to release on Xbox One with no limitations.
No doubt, Funcom will be trying to figure out what the difference is between Andromeda and its own game to see if it can argue that nudity should be preserved, or so that it can figure out what changes it needs to make to let the nudity continue.
There’s also the question of whether or not this will harm the game’s console sales. Conan Exiles made back its development costs in just 28 days, with almost 500,000 copies sold on PC and some of that performance was driven by the enthusiasm and interest in its nude content. If that nude content is cut, potentially, less people will want to buy the game on Xbox One and PS4 and so Funcom will likely be doing its best to keep it in the game.
Source: DualShockers
