Conan Exiles, an open world survival adventure featuring full nudity, made headlines yesterday after we learned that the upcoming Xbox One version of the game may be slightly toned down. For those unfamiliar, the Steam early access version of Conan Exiles currently includes a male endowment slider, but the game’s creative director Joel Bylos recently explained that this feature would need to be removed to release the game in the Xbox Preview program. “Xbox has been pretty clear with us that it’s not going to fly,” explained Bylos.
Microsoft has since stepped up to address the controversy, issuing a statement to explain that the decision to include nudity or not will be up to the ESRB (via Any Button Gaming):
The statement made by Funcom about “Conan” content being altered at the discretion of Microsoft was inaccurate. Microsoft and Xbox abide by the policies and guidelines set forth by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) rating system. Funcom has submitted “Conan Exiles” for review to the ESRB and pending its receipt of an acceptable rating we look forward to publishing the game on Xbox.
So, it looks like Microsoft is ready to publish the Conan Exiles if it gets an acceptable rating from the ESRB. For now, the game is still expected to be released on the Xbox One Preview program in Q3 2017.