BREAKING: Microsoft has confirmed plans to bring four of its exclusive games to the other consoles as part of plans to grow the franchises.
In a much-anticipated episode of The Offical Xbox Podcast (which you can see below) Xbox chief Phil Spencer confirmed recent reports and speculation, but wouldn’t specify which games will cross the traditional console divide.
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Significantly, and contrary to recent rumour, Spencer did say Starfield and the forthcoming Indiana Jones title will not lose their exclusivity.
Other rumoured games include Sea of Thieves, Hi-Fi Rush, long-term favourites like Gears of War and Halo, but Spencer says the identity of the first four games will be revealed in due course. There are no promises of further games beyond that.
Spencer opened the show by saying: “We’ve made the decision we’re going to take four games to the other consoles. Just four games, not a change of our fundamental exclusive strategy. We’re making these decisions for some specific reasons. We make every decision with the long-term health of Xbox in mind.”
“And the long-term health of Xbox means a growing platform, our games performing, building the best platform for creators and reaching as many players as we can. This is an interesting point in time for us to use what some of the other platforms have right now to help grow our francises. So we’re going to do that.”
“I’m not going to name those games. The teams that are making those games have [to be] announced plans that are not too far away… So I don’t want to take anything away from those teams. I won’t be talking about the titles specifically.”
Spencer said the games selected for expansion on the other consoles, presumably both PlayStation and Nintendo consoles, are all over a year old.
A couple of them are community-driven games, first iterations of a franchise that have reached their full potential on Xbox and PC. He said Microsoft wants to continue to invest in those franchises, so the expansion to non-exclusive platforms will help raise the necessary funds to do that.
He said the other two games were smaller, but weren’t built to be Microsoft exclusive. Again, Spencer reckons they have reached their potential on Xbox and PC.
Spencer warned gamers on non-Xbox platforms “not to take this as a sign that everything’s coming. It’s not.”
