On today’s highly anticipated Official Xbox Podcast, Xbox head Phil Spencer addressed the rumors that Xbox was going to be proliferating its games across rival platforms. And the rumors are true – sort of. Spencer confirmed four titles will in fact be coming to other platforms such as PlayStation and Switch.
“We’re going to take four games to the other consoles,” he said. “Just four games. Not a change to our fundamental exclusive strategy. We make every decision with the long-term health of Xbox in mind. Long-term health of Xbox means a growing platform, our games performing, building the best platform for creators, reaching as many players as we can.”
As for why Xbox is interested in this new strategy, Spencer said, “This is an interesting point in time for us to use what some of the other platforms have right now to help grow our franchises. So we’re gonna do that.”
Spencer declined to name the games specifically, not wanting to step on the toes of the developers behind them. “I’m not gonna name those games,” he said. “The teams that are building those games have announce plans that are not too far away.”
However, he did confirm when straight-up asked: “They are not Starfield or Indiana Jones.”
While Spencer refused to outright name the games, he gave several hints. Spencer broke down the four games that will be moving to other platforms, breaking them into sets of two. The first two are “community-driven” games, while the other two are “smaller”.
“We looked at games that are over a year old, so they’ve been on Xbox and PC for a while. A couple of the games are community-driven games. Franchises that we obviously want to continue to invest in. Part of having the ability to continue to invest is that the businesses behind those franchises continue.”
He continued, “Two of the other games are smaller games that were never really meant to be built as platform exclusives and all the fanfare that goes around that, but games that our teams really wanted to go build. As they’ve realized their full potential on Xbox and PC, we see an opportunity to utilize the other platforms to drive more business value out of them.”
Spencer stressed that this does not mean that every game is coming to other platforms in the future, but that this is an opportunity for the company to learn.
It sure sounds like Hi-Fi Rush and Sea of Thieves are two of those games. Any guesses on the other two?
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