Among Us PS4, Xbox One Console Ports Are More Complicated Than You Think

Developer InnerSloth has explained why its extremely popular online multiplayer game Among Us isn't on consoles like PlayStation 4 or Xbox One yet. The biggest hurdle in the studio's way is apparently player communication. It's at the core of the experience, and if it isn't implemented correctly in a console port, it could ruin the game.

According to studio programmer Forest Willard--who played Among us with a bunch of Twitch streamers earlier this week, including 5uppp--figuring out how to implement player communication in a game that's largely text-based chat might prove difficult when porting Among Us to consoles.

"[A console port] is something we're starting to talk about," Willard said. "But we'd have to write a system for quick comms. It'd basically be for randoms, like Rocket League. I don't know if we'd be able to implement console voice chat or not. I know one of the first things we want to add is a friend's list-type account system because it's real hard to do anything without that s***."

Among Us currently doesn't feature any sort of built-in voice chat tools. If players want to speak to each other in a lobby, they must either pull up the game's chatroom or jump to a separate app like Discord. This isn't as much a problem as is devising a way for people who prefer to not use voice chat but still want to communicate with the other players. In this scenario, Inverse reports, players would have to use a mouse and keyboard on both systems, which is possible but cumbersome. Very few people own them for the consoles. And this generation, game lobbies can often be silent.

Otherwise, the only other solution is for InnerSloth to develop an entirely new communication system for console players. It's unclear if the studio is currently working on it, though the comments sound as if InnerSloth is, at the very least, presently considering the idea and weighing the options.

A sequel was briefly in the works. However, it was later scrapped in favor of adding its planned content to the original game.

Among Us is available on Android, iOS, and PC. The game is soaring in popularity, too, amassing more than 85 million downloads on mobile devices and reaching top view and player counts on Steam and Twitch.