Yacht Club scraps Xbox One’s physical Shovel Knight release

Publishing policies” have been blamed for the decision to scrap the release of indie platformer Shovel Knight on Xbox One.

With extremely heavy hearts, we’re sad to announce there will not be an Xbox One physical version this holiday,” developer Yacht Club said. We really gave it our best effort, but unfortunately, because of publishing policies on that platform that are totally beyond our control, we couldn’t make it happen.

We’re very sorry… we know there is a lot of interest – the pre-orders were really good and we thank everyone for their support! We’ll keep fighting to get a retail version on Xbox One, but as of now, the boxed version is in indefinite limbo.”

In more bad news, the studio has also been forced to raise the game’s RRP.

In an unexpected turn of events, we’ve had to raise the price of our game to $24.99,” it added.

Although everyone initially agreed to a $19.99 price point, some retailers ran into trouble with limited space to show off their wares, and the rules in place about where games with certain prices are displayed. We didn’t want our ‘bargain priced’ game to go straight to the bargain bin of obscurity, so we had to raise the price.”

Pre-orders will still be honoured at the original price, at least.

To cap it all off the game has also been delayed. Having originally been due out on October 13th it will now hit Europe on October 30th and then America on November 3rd.