After a lot of rumors, Xbox released a roughly 23-minute podcast in which its heads came together to address the rumors and talk a bit about the future of Xbox. The big takeaway is that four specific, unnamed titles will be coming to other consoles in the future, but Xbox’s stance on exclusivity isn’t changing otherwise. Oh, and Starfield and Indiana Jones are not one of those four games.
No fundamental changes to exclusitivity
According to Phil Spencer, two of the four games heading to other platforms are community-driven games. The other two are smaller games that were not necessarily built to be console-exclusive in the first place, and so it naturally makes sense to expand onto other platforms.
He didn’t share which four titles they were, but rather than the development studios would do so when it made sense. The Verge is currently reporting that these four titles are Pentiment, Hi-Fi Rush, Grounded, and Sea of Thieves, which all fit the bill if you line them up against those criteria.
“We see an opportunity to utilize the other platforms as a place to just drive more business value out of those games, allowing us to invest in maybe future iterations of those, sequels to those, or other games like them in our portfolio.”
– Phil Spencer, Head of Xbox
New hardware news on the horizon
Near the end of the podcast, President of Xbox Sarah Bond tested some that some Xbox hardware news is coming soon.
“We’ve got more to come. There’s some exciting stuff coming out in hardware that we’re going to share this holiday. And we’re also invested in the next generation roadmap. And what we’re really focused on there is delivering the largest technical leap you will have ever seen in a hardware generation, which makes it better for players and better for creators and the visions that they’re building.”
– Sarah Bond, President of Xbox
Welcome to the early talks of the next generation, folks. Just yesterday Sony also described the PlayStation 5 as entering the “latter half” of its life cycle, so it’s no surprise to see Xbox planting the seeds for future hardware development.
The podcast ended with Head of Xbox Game Studios Matt Booty teasing that while there are more than 10 major releases coming up, they will have more games to talk about in the Xbox June Showcase.
So as we predicted, it looks like the truth was somewhere in the middle. Microsoft is bringing some titles that make sense to the other platforms, but not shifting their overall exclusivity focus. No Halo on your PS5 just yet. But Diablo 4 and other Activision Blizzard games will be heading to the Game Pass, if you’re eager for some more Xbox games in the near future.
