Sea of Thieves wasn’t the one Xbox unique reported to be eyeing different horizons: Hi-Fi Rush was rumored to be coming to Nintendo Switch too. In gentle of this, it’s simple to see how Nadella’s feedback may look. It’s solely attainable, nonetheless, that Nadella was referring simply to Activision when speaking about being an excellent writer on Sony, Nintendo, PCs, and Xbox.
After all of the acquisitions Microsoft has made and the work it’s put into bolstering its line-up of upcoming Xbox exclusives, wouldn’t it be diluting that tough work by then placing these exclusives on different platforms?
Being the most important online game acquisition of all time, it’s solely truthful that Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard must be a suitably prolonged course of, however all of us sat by way of that lengthy, lengthy course of and noticed frequent affirmation that Microsoft would preserve Call of Duty on PlayStation. Sony and Microsoft lastly signed a Call of Duty deal final yr by which Microsoft promised to maintain the first-person shooter collection on PlayStation consoles as soon as the acquisition went by way of.
Earlier within the yr, Microsoft signed a “binding ten-year contract” to convey Call of Duty to Nintendo platforms. And when Microsoft later accomplished that $69 billion acquisition, Spencer defined that Microsoft had began work to convey “beloved Activision, Blizzard, and King franchises to Game Pass and different platforms.”
Xbox usually talks about making video games out there in all places attainable, and clearly there can be advantages there for Microsoft. But the Xbox staff additionally appears to be placing a number of work into build up the Xbox model and trying to fulfill participant issues. After dialogue round Xbox’s lack of exclusives over the previous couple of years, particularly when making an allowance for that they launched a brand new technology of consoles, 2024 has began off with a Developer Direct highlighting a number of massive Xbox exclusives coming this yr.
After a very long time of listening to about acquisitions, we’re hopefully gearing as much as see the fruits of this labour with extra nice Game Pass video games and extra massive Xbox releases. Xbox stored Starfield as an unique (adore it or hate it, it was an enormous get for Xbox). The new Indiana Jones sport was initially meant to return to a number of consoles, however this was modified to make the sport unique to Xbox and PC after Microsoft’s acquisition of Bethesda. And, though it is nonetheless years away, Elder Scrolls 6 is Xbox unique in line with Microsoft’s personal courtroom doc.
That’s to not say Microsoft will not convey any of it is first-party video games to different platforms sooner or later, nevertheless it’s additionally attainable that these would be the exception, moderately than the rule.
All this to say that if the larger fear about Xbox exclusives on different platforms is that Xbox is conceding floor in comparison with its rivals, it doesn’t look like that is the case. Rather than the Xbox model shrinking, it seems to be aiming to get larger and higher than ever.
