Phil Spencer, Sarah Bond, and Matt Booty have shared their vision on game exclusivity, the future of Xbox hardware, and the overall Xbox promise in a new episode of the Official Xbox Podcast, and with it comes the news that Starfield and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle—contrary to rampant rumors—will remain exclusive to the Xbox and Windows PC platforms. That said, Xbox plans to bring four of its games to rival platforms (e.g., PS5 and Nintendo Switch), the titles of which will officially be revealed at a later date.
Rumored titles:
- Hi-Fi Rush
- Grounded
- Pentiment
- Sea of Thieves
Spencer on whether more Xbox games will be going multiplatform if those are successful:
- “Yeah, but we haven’t seen that yet. We’re obviously one of the biggest publishers on PlayStation and Nintendo today, when you think about the Activision Blizzard and Bethesda lineup of games. So we know what it means to ship games on Steam, PlayStation, Nintendo, and Xbox.”
- “These are games that originally launched on Xbox. They were Xbox-branded games and we want to see what happens, because going and doing the development work to bring them to new platforms is real work. We want to make sure that the return makes sense. We want to make sure the audience that’s there has an appetite, maybe they don’t.”
Spencer on whether Starfield and Indiana Jones could eventually go multiplatform:
- “I don’t think we should as an industry ever rule out a game going to any other platform. We’re focused on these four games and learning from the experience.”
- “But I don’t want to create a false expectation on those other platforms that this is somehow the first four to get over the dam and then the dam’s going to open and that everything else is coming, that’s not the plan today. I also don’t want to mislead customers on those other platforms.”
- “We’re launching these four games, and we’re excited about it. We’re excited about the announce and everything else, but we’ll see what happens for our business.”
Xbox is reportedly considering to make multiplatform:
- Gears of War
- Microsoft Flight Simulator
- Next DOOM
Xbox defends its new approach:
By bringing these games to more players, we not only expand the reach and impact of those titles, but this will allow us to invest in either future versions of these games, or elsewhere in our first-party portfolio. There is no fundamental change to our approach on exclusivity.
Xbox also promised:
- The biggest games in the world will be on Xbox.
- Our games will come to Game Pass day one.
- A robust and innovative multi-year hardware roadmap
- Compatibility with your library is a priority, inclusive of cross-play, cross-save, and robust cloud features.
- Xbox will continue to help game creators find the biggest audience possible.