With rumours still permeating social media around first-party Xbox Game Studios titles like Starfield, Indiana Jones and more going multiplatform in future, and Xbox boss Phil Spencer very vaguely announcing an update of some kind on the company’s plans this week, the idea of Microsoft exiting the gaming console sphere altogether has naturally been thrown around a fair bit.
That’s just not the case though, according to journalist Shannon Liao who has made the claim that Spencer himself held an internal townhall last week after the first word of a potential multiplatform strategy made its way onto the internet, where employees were assured that there are currently no plans to drop out of the hardware race and that Xbox consoles would continue to be a part of its multi-device strategy.
other things in this weekly issue: a new report of a Tuesday Xbox townhall, an excerpt from my interview with an Epic EVP about toy metaverses, and lots of highlights from one good site Inverse including freelance pieces (like Final Fantasy at BAFTA) I was excited to commission!
— Shannon Liao (@Shannon_Liao) February 9, 2024
Xbox’s “business update event” is scheduled for this week where the company will be sharing details on what’s next in the brand’s future.
We don’t yet have a date or time for when this “event” is going to occur, with Spencer’s message on social media last week simply reading, “We’re listening and we hear you. We’ve been planning a business update event for next week, where we look forward to sharing more details with you about our vision for the future of Xbox. Stay tuned.”
We're listening and we hear you. We've been planning a business update event for next week, where we look forward to sharing more details with you about our vision for the future of Xbox. Stay tuned.
— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) February 5, 2024
In the last week or so, with little other input from official channels, rumours and claims from every corner have grown as more “insiders” share which games they believe are headed to more platforms than just Xbox and PC. Those titles include the above as well as games like Hellblade 2, Pentiment, Grounded, the Gears of War Series and more, though we obviously don’t know how accurate any of these actually are until Xbox makes the announcement itself.
Fans desperate for more information have even latched onto things like US retailer GameStop using the term “Microsoft Game Pass” in a tweet or months-old updates to the Xbox website that changed some branding around games’ “Day One” Game Pass availability, to fuel speculation over possible scenarios like Game Pass itself landing on competing consoles.
That rumours like these carry so much weight also shows that Xbox fans are ready for the company to be more forthcoming about its first-party plans and the direction of its business – no less after it just shed nearly 10% of the Xbox workforce post-Activision Blizzard acquisition.
