Duke Nukem Forever expanded inventory update 'unlikely' for consoles

Yesterday, Shacknews reported that Duke Nukem Forever would soon be updated to increase Duke's weapon inventory slots from two to four in the single-player portion of the game; however, only the PC version of the game was named as a recipient of the increase.

Today, Gearbox Community Manager Chris Faylor pointed Shacknews to a new thread that outlines the possibility of the console versions of the game getting a similar update. Sorry console Duke fans, but it seems that a change to Duke's weapon slots is "unlikely."

According to the post on the official Gearbox forum, expanding Duke's inventory to allow more weapons to be carried at once "involves overcoming several significant technical challenges and assumptions within the software that cannot be quickly overcome on consoles without risk to the performance, stability or integrity of the software. As such, it's unlikely that the expanded inventory can be enabled on consoles at this time."

It seems pretty clear why this decision has been made. The nature of installed files existing on a computer with the ability to be tweaked at any point makes the change on PC less of a technical hurdle, versus a printed disc that feeds a console information. It's certainly not out of the realm of possibility with a substantial upgrade, but for an addition that is noted in the post as an "unsupported option," I don't think console players should hold their collective breath.

Faylor reiterated that the change is specific to the single-player portion of the game and that the team at Gearbox is working "very hard to further optimize the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions in the forthcoming updates."