It's now official, Xbox Series exclusives are coming to Nintendo Switch and PS5. Here's what we know about the brand's future strategy.
It was one of the most anticipated speeches at the start of the year. Faced with increasingly insistent rumors, Microsoft was forced to speak out on the future of Xbox and its exclusives. The noises in the corridors brought up many names, Starfield, Indiana Jones, Hi-Fi Rush, the Gears series and even Sea of Thieves in the lead. It was during a long podcast discussing the brand's future strategy that Microsoft confirmed the inevitable: Xbox exclusives will be released on PS5 and Nintendo Switch and a few games have already been confirmed.
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Four Xbox exclusives on PS5 and Nintendo Switch
It's now official, Xbox Series exclusives will arrive on competing platforms. In the official podcast dedicated to the future of the brand, Phil Spencer, boss of the gaming branch, and his comrades discussed at length the strategy which will be implemented shortly. This will therefore involve publishing its exclusives on PS5 and Nintendo Switch. Let's calm down immediately, Starfield and Indiana Jones will not arrive on PlayStation consoles, as Spencer confirmed during this speech. For now, only four games are planned.
If Microsoft strangely refused to reveal their names using vague terms, The Verge got all four names: Hi-Fi Rush and Pentiment, followed by Sea of Thieves and Grounded. The Xbox boss says that this in no way changes his position on the brand's exclusives, but on the other hand he believes that there will be fewer and fewer exclusives in the industry over the next decade.
“ We are focused on these four games and we will learn from this experience. We don't have anything planned at this time for other franchises. But to say that something will never be done, I think that comes down to creating more certainty in an industry where we really want to respond to what the players and our developers want,” adds Spencer. So never say never. Especially since as the thinking head of the brand points out, Xbox is already “one of the major publishers on PS5 and Nintendo Switch” thanks to the acquisition of Activision-Blizzard, Zenimax and even Minecraft.
Exclusives still on Game Pass?
As Phil Spencer reiterates several times, there will ultimately be no “fundamental change” in the management of Xbox exclusives. This also means that in-house games will continue to be released on Game Pass as soon as they are released. There are therefore some 34 million players (latest official figures announced during this speech), who will continue to discover Xbox Studios games as soon as they are launched. And not only that. Microsoft intends to gradually deploy Activision's productions – Blizzard on its service. This will start with Diablo 4 on March 28, 2024. Ultimately, Microsoft does not intend to change its strategy so much, but to refine it further to respond to market movements and player expectations.
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