Yacht Club scraps Xbox One’s physical Shovel Knight release

So, if you own an Xbox One and want to play Shovel Knight, you’ll just have to download it like the hundreds of thousands of other players who have thoroughly enjoyed it already. The studio credited the delay to “publishing policies on the [Xbox One] that are beyond our control”.

The reason why the retail Xbox One version of Shovel Knight is being cancelled comes down to Xbox One specific publishing policies that, for one reason or another, are preventing the game from having a retail release on the system.

Shovel Knight will be available at retail stores from November 3 in North American and October 30 in Europe.

For a brief period yesterday, Nintendo listed ye olde Shovel Knight amiibo as being compatible for training in battle in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, which seemed to suggest he is going to be a DLC character in the fighting game.

The physical version of the game will include the recently released Plague of Shadows expansion and a copy of the game’s soundtrack.

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

Shovel Knight has seen nothing but good news since it first launched, but that hot streak had to come to an end at a few point.

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

Unfortunately, it looks like the Xbox One edition of the game won’t be released at all.

Finally, the Vita retail release also seems to be in Limbo as the developers revealed that they’re working their hardest to make it happen, but failed to commit to a release date. This decision was funded less by greed and more by exposure as several retailers told the studio that shelf space was a limited and that a game under $20 would only be featured in a bargain bin. Hang in there a bit longer, and hopefully we can make something happen!’