Four Xbox exclusives are headed to PlayStation and Nintendo Switch. Microsoft confirmed the news via its official Xbox podcast, during which Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer declared the decision was a part of the company’s growth strategy. While Spencer did not state which games would be making the jump, explaining that he didn’t want to “take anything away” from the respective studios planning to make individual announcements, he did confirm that both Indiana Jones and Starfield will remain Xbox exclusives.
But while Spencer remains quiet on the specifics, a recent report by The Verge’s Tom Warren claims that Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment, Sea of Thieves, and Grounded are the four games Xbox is bringing to new consoles. These titles perfectly align with what Spencer continued on to say about the four games on the podcast:
“Two of them are kind of community-driven games that will end up on other platforms and give us the ability to continue to invest in them. We think that’s great for the business and great for the communities–more players to play with,” Spencer said. “Two of the other games are smaller games that were never really meant to be built as kind of platform exclusives and all the fanfare that goes around that, but games that our teams really wanted to go build that we love supporting creative endeavors across our studios regardless of size.”
Exciting as this all is, however, Spencer also stated that players on other platforms should not take these games coming over as “some signal that everything is coming. It’s not.” Spencer explained that Microsoft will only bring Xbox games to other consoles when it won’t “damage Xbox” and the company can still grow its business “using what other platforms have to help us with that,” which is not the case for every game. Spencer also expressed that part of bringing games to other consoles is simply to get players on other platforms more interested in Xbox and its franchises.
In other Xbox news, Microsoft also announced that Diablo 4 is coming to Xbox Game Pass. This marks the first Activision Blizzard game to come to the subscription service following it being acquired by Microsoft. The company also shared that Game Pass currently has 34 million members and will not be coming to PlayStation or Nintendo Switch, despite rumors that emerged late last year. Additionally, new Xbox hardware is launching later in 2024.
