Ikumi Nakamura stole the show at E3 2019 and won over thousands of players back when she was still at Tango Gameworks. Now she’s running her own independent studio, UNSEEN, which is hard at work on its first project called KEMURI.

However, dozens of Xbox players have been coming after her ever since she confirmed her game won’t be heading to Series X|S and explained why she has no plans to make a port.

In an interview, Nakamura flat-out closed the door on a KEMURI version for Microsoft’s consoles. But it was her tone that set people off. Before long, the criticism turned into a flood of angry posts and even personal attacks against her.

Ikumi Nakamura

Why Isn’t KEMURI Coming to Xbox?

Ikumi Nakamura is one of the biggest names in the Japanese games industry. She’s built her reputation on franchises like Okami, Bayonetta, and Ghostwire: Tokyo, among others. Right now, she’s leading development on KEMURI, a game that puts players in the shoes of Yokai hunters, supernatural creatures of Japanese folklore.

The game was first confirmed for PC, which left everyone wondering if it would show up on other platforms. In a recent interview, Nakamura was asked point-blank about an Xbox Series X|S version. Her answer was short and sharp: “No.”

She then explained her reasoning. Porting a game takes time and resources, and as a small independent studio, UNSEEN has to be careful about where it puts its energy. She confirmed the plan is to finish KEMURI for PC first, then look at bringing it to PlayStation or Nintendo down the line. Xbox, for now, simply isn’t part of the conversation.

“I just want people to understand that porting takes a lot of work. We develop the game for PC first, then bringing it to Nintendo or PlayStation requires engineers to handle the port work,” she said.

Nakamura went on to say that adding yet another version would stretch her team too thin. She’d rather skip Xbox entirely than put the health of her friends and colleagues at risk.

“At a big company, you usually have dedicated people to handle that. But we are really a small studio, if we had to do the porting ourselves, our engineers would be exhausted. I’d rather prioritize people’s lives. I don’t want anyone dying just to release an Xbox version. People come first. That’s all,” she concluded.

Ikumi Nakamura KEMURI

Xbox Players Fire Back at Ikumi Nakamura

Nakamura’s answer and the way she delivered it infuriated a lot of Xbox players, who feel she’s openly disrespecting the brand. Some think she went way too far by implying someone could die making a port for Series X|S. Others are just angry at how bluntly she shot down Xbox.

The backlash spread quickly on social media, and before long, the developer was facing direct attacks. Some users on X predicted KEMURI would flop and vowed not to support it. Others think Nakamura torpedoed her own career by showing that kind of “contempt” for Xbox.

Plenty of players jumped to her defense, pointing out that porting a game is neither easy nor cheap especially for a small team. Some even argue that bringing KEMURI to Xbox wouldn’t be worth the effort anyway, given how much smaller the platform’s player base is compared to the other consoles.