Microsoft has already brought Pentiment and Hi-Fi RUSH to the PS4 and/or PS5, but many more Xbox games will be coming to Sony’s PlayStation platforms, according to Chris Dring, head of GamesIndustry.biz, who claims to have received a lot of negative news regarding the Xbox brand during last week’s GDC event, including what some companies have described as “flatlining” sales performance. Grounded will be coming to PlayStation consoles and the Nintendo Switch on April 16, while Sea of Thieves will be available for PS5 on April 30.
Dring mentioned:
- “…[something] I kept hearing at GDC was ‘what the hell is going on with Xbox’…”
- “…I heard from a very prominent company…and one not so prominent…Xbox’s performance in Europe is, it’s just flatlining…”
- “…you can see the Xbox sales are falling, and it’s been falling all through last year, and it’s falling even harder this year…”
- “…the phrase one major company, who released a big game last year, said ‘I don’t know why we bothered supporting it’…”
- “…retailers in Europe were considering, or had already been, cutting back their Xbox stock on their shelves…”
- “…you’ve got third-party publishers going, ‘we’re putting in a lot of effort trying to create a Series S version and an X version of a game when, to be honest with you, for us, the market is PC and PS5’…”
- “…with Xbox putting some of the games on PS5, what I understand [is] the majority of them will be coming across at some point…”
- “…I think Xbox is in real trouble as a hardware manufacturer…”
Dring goes on to share some news about the PS5 Pro:
- “…I didn’t meet a single person that understood the point of it…”
- “…developers didn’t really seem to feel they needed it…at least the ones I spoke to…”
- “…a couple of companies said that this isn’t going to grow the market…this isn’t going to move the needle…”
The full episode:
This week, Chris Dring returns from San Francisco to bring us a better sense of the mood at GDC and how it reflects what’s happening in the industry, as well as some of the more interesting things he learned around the conference.
Microsoft on what’s coming next month:
- Grounded – also from Obsidian Entertainment – a co-op survival adventure phenomenon that has welcomed 20 million players into the backyard, will be coming to PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch on April 16. Cross play will be supported across Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch and PC.
- Sea of Thieves, the shared world adventure game from Rare, will be coming to PlayStation 5 on April 30 – and will be available to wishlist by PlayStation 5 players [from] February 22. Having built a passionate community of more than 35 million players from around the world, the support of cross play for Xbox, PlayStation and PC will allow players to experience epic pirate adventures with friends on more platforms.
Whether it’s Nintendo Switch and PlayStation players surviving in the backyard together in Grounded, or PlayStation players getting to live a pirate’s life in Sea of Thieves, with cross-play, these multiplayer titles available will bring more people together and continue to grow their communities of players.