Microsoft's Recent Layoffs Contradict Activision Blizzard Buyout Pledges, Says FTC | Push Square

Current Crash and Spyro developer Toys For Bob is spinning itself out of Activision Blizzard.

As the gaming industry is hit with the bleak news of yet more layoffs, Baldur's Gate 3 developer Larian Studios is stepping in to offer assistance to the people affected. Baldur's Gate 3 recently celebrated the milestone of hitting 10 million sales and boasts roughly 600,000 players daily.

With Diablo 4 becoming the first Activision Blizzard game to launch for Game Pass on March 28th, the door is seemingly open for other titles to follow. Speaking to Game File’s Stephen Totilo, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said the company intends that “the full portfolio of games from ZeniMax, Activision Blizzard and XGS – Xbox Game Studios – will be on Game Pass, day one.”

Microsoft has officially confirmed it’ll bring four formerly exclusive games to rival platforms like PS5, but it won’t say which ones. As part of a bizarre podcast featuring executives Phil Spencer, Sarah Bond, and Matt Booty, the trillion-dollar tech titan danced around the rumours which have been doing the rounds for weeks now.

We don’t know about you, but it feels like the PS5 has barely broken a sweat yet. Despite being over three years old, the system’s lifespan has been hugely impacted by the pandemic, which has seen its first-party software cadence slow to a crawl and its early years massively affected by hardware shortages. It’s a little odd to hear Sony talk about the system entering the “latter half” of its lifecycle, then.

Bandai Namco has revealed that it cancelled at least five in-development games, and will change its internal development structure moving forward. Stricter rules will make it more difficult for future games to proceed past specific development milestones, as increasing costs make games even more expensive, risky propositions.

Microsoft will bring four first-party titles to PS5, but it’s refusing to name which. Said titles will not include Starfield and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, which will remain exclusive to Xbox and PC, until circumstances change. Xbox bigwig Phil Spencer, however, has seen the success of Helldivers 2 – and is struggling to see the advantage of the PlayStation-published shooter not being available on Xbox.

Microsoft only announced four first-party titles for PS5 today, and it’s refusing to name which ones, although the likelihood is that Sea of Thieves, Grounded, Hi-Fi Rush, and Pentiment will all get ported. However, its stance is wishy-washy when it comes to other releases, with Spencer claiming he doesn’t believe “we should as an industry ever rule out a game going to any other platform”.

Four Microsoft first-party games will launch on Sony's PlayStation 5 and the Nintendo Switch, the company confirmed late Thursday after weeks of speculation over its exclusive titles releasing on rival platforms. The announcement came on the Official Xbox Podcast from Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer, who also shed further light on the reasons behind Xbox's business decision and confirmed that the next generation of Xbox consoles were in development. Microsoft has not yet revealed the four Xbox exclusives coming to PS5 and Nintendo Switch, but The Verge reported that said games would be Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment, Sea of Thieves and Grounded.

The Internet is extremely unforgiving. Whatever you put on it will be preserved in some fashion, for better or worse, and it's a lesson still being learned in the year 2024. Case in point: the LinkedIn page of a Microsoft employee, who may have added yet more evidence to the heavily rumoured move from Xbox to publish its games on other consoles.

While an enormous amount of attention has been placed on the games Microsoft is potentially bringing to PlayStation, reports also suggest the tech titan has been quietly stocking up on PS5 devkits to support its plans. Speculation comes courtesy of fan site Xbox Era, which broke the news Starfield may be coming to Sony’s system later this year. This article kickstarted a landslide of stories, which has also seen Indiana Jones and Gears of War conversions touted.

It would appear all is well when it comes to recent Japanese games. We've had a great run of big new releases from Eastern teams lately and, if Steam player numbers are anything to go by, it seems they're all making a decent splash right now.