Today saw the arrival of Xbox’s big “business update,” which Microsoft revealed via a special episode of the Official Xbox Podcast featuring Phil Spencer, Sarah Bond and Matt Booty. The podcast came as something of a reaction to a sudden explosion of rumours of a new multiplatform strategy for Microsoft’s gaming business and has finally provided something in the way of answers.
The team came straight in with the big topic – exclusivity. Phil Spencer introduced the segment by stressing that the fundamental exclusive strategy for Xbox’s games business going forward isn’t changing, but that four games have been decided on to be brought across to new platforms.
Spencer wouldn’t name the titles or confirm which platforms they’d be targeting, but did confirm that they are not Starfield or Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. The four titles in this endeavour were apparently selected in the name of “the long-term health of Xbox,” with games that are over a year old and/or are community driven and have reached the limits of their cut-through on the current ecosystem of devices. Two of these are “community driven” games and two are smaller titles, with Spencer implying that these games weren’t necessarily designed for Xbox exclusivity from the beginning.
Based on prior rumours, and Phil’s hints, it definitely seems as though we’ll see at least Hi-Fi Rush and Sea of Thieves land on other platforms, and the other two could realistically be something like Pentiment and Grounded.
As far as the future goes, the team didn’t necessarily rule it out and instead glossed over the question somewhat, but it was stressed that Xbox first party games will still always come to Xbox, always come to Game Pass on day one and that Game Pass will always only be available on the Xbox platform, with Matt Booty saying the desire to bring more Xbox games to more players means that they’ll continue to look at other platforms in the future.
You can watch the full podcast below:
