The short-term future of Xbox means that at least four Xbox exclusives are coming to PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch, Microsoft announced Thursday on its Official Xbox Podcast.
Microsoft and Xbox boss Phil Spencer did not share the four games, saying that the respective developers will announce it themselves. But according to The Verge, those games are Hi-Fi Rush and Pentiment first followed by Sea of Thieves and Grounded. Spencer said Starfield and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle are not included in the four currently expected games. But Spencer also said he expects the number of exclusive games will continue to dwindle over the next five to 10 years.
“Today, big games like Roblox or Fortnite could actually be bigger than any one platform,” Xbox Games Studio head Matt Booty said. “And that really changed the way we think about things.”
The discourse around Xbox exclusivity has been off the charts since rumors in January that Tango Gameworks’ Hi-Fi Rush was going multiplatform, followed by reports that Sea of Thieves could come to PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch. When news reports that Microsoft’s 2023 marquee game Starfield and its upcoming Indiana Jones and the Great Circle were being considered for PlayStation 5, all bets were off. “Console war” culture over the past several decades has left video game players attached to their specific console, and plenty of people invested in Xbox were left upset by the, sometimes overly dramatic, speculation on what could be happening at Microsoft and Xbox.
The reality of the announcement is not actually that surprising: Microsoft has been publishing games across platforms and consoles for years — like, for instance, with Minecraft. The company’s also published most of its games on Windows PC alongside its Xbox consoles, too, for the last few years. Bringing Activision Blizzard on board in its $68.7 billion merger is another push into its multiplatform future: Call of Duty will remain on all platforms, as discussed during the Federal Trade Commission hearings. Microsoft has kept it no secret that it wants its games to be playable for as many players as possible: “Our mission is to bring our first-party experiences [and] our subscription services to every screen that can play games,” Xbox chief financial officer Tim Stuart said in November. Xbox Game Pass is a huge part of that vision.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that Xbox Game Pass will come to competitor consoles; in fact, Microsoft said during the event that it won’t.
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