Due to the recent rumours swelling the past week of Xbox “going multiplatform” which has caused meltdowns among die-hard Xbox fans, apparently, the Xbox leadership has cleared some of the air with an appearance on the Official Xbox Podcast.
In the podcast, it’s been confirmed that this year will see four games under the big Xbox Game Studios umbrella going multiplatform.
Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has not outright list the four games. However, he listed out specific criterias of what those four games may be.
First, all of the four games have been out at least a year on Xbox and PC. These games won’t damage the Xbox brand for being released on other consoles.
Spencer also ruled out Starfield and Indiana Jones And The Great Circle (published by Bethesda) are not them.
Two games are “community-driven games”, “first iterations of a franchise that have reached their full potential on Xbox and PC”. These are live service games.
The other two games are “smaller games that were never really meant to be built as platform exclusives” that are also “games that our teams really wanted to go built that we love supporting creative endeavours across our studios regardless of size,” as Spencer puts it.
According to rumours, Hi-Fi Rush and Pentiment are likely to be released on other consoles, and these two fit the latter category of “smaller games”. As for the live service titles, Sea Of Thieves is a strong candidate.
From the way Xbox is framing this story, it’s just business as usual. Xbox as a platforms has made efforts to be less of a wall garden but to be present outside of their own garden, so to speak.
And the podcast’s 22-minute run see fellow Xbox’s Sarah Bond and Matt Booty re-emphasising that this is how they are currently doing business (and why you should still continue to “invest” in Xbox’s ecosystem). This includes vague descriptions of a next generation console, to hopefully quell down the rumours that have spiralled into saying the brand will stop making new consoles with this “new” mutiplatform strategy.
Various Xbox Game Studios titles are currently available on PlayStation and Switch, like Minecraft and Minecraft Legends (which launched simultaneously on all platforms). And Call Of Duty will still be available on PlayStation even after Xbox has acquired Activision Blizzard.
The big news, we argue, was for Bethesda, which was previously a multiplatform publisher pre-Xbox acquisition, was releasing Xbox exclusives last year. All three of their games from 2023 (Hi-Fi Rush, Redfall, Starfield) were only available on Xbox Series consoles and PC. Though it’s much less newsworthy considering Redfall being not good and Starfield leaving mixed impressions.
Xbox has been sluggish to launch its console on new markets. SoyaCincau spotted a listing that indicates the Xbox Series X|S is being certified for sale in Malaysia, and should that be true, it will be the first time an Xbox is officially sold in the country throughout the whole time Xbox’s existence. Console availability in Southeast Asia has only been limited to Singapore, and it’s not until the recent expansion of PC Game Pass has Xbox really engaged with players in this part of the world. And regions like Southeast Asia will see Xbox benefitting for having more of their games going multiplatform, because they never released an Xbox here in the first place
This is to say, Xbox releasing its multiplatform games is just business as usual.