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16.02.2024 - 12:24 / pcgamesinsider.biz / Phil Spencer / Sarah Bond / Matt Booty
Microsoft is going to be launching four titles in its line-up to other platforms in the near future.
That's according to some of the Xbox top brass – chief Phil Spencer, president Sarah Bond and studios chief Matt Booty – who took part in a podcast to address the slew of recent rumours and reporting about the company's first-party strategy.
It's not clear what these four games are going to be, though The Verge reports that it is going to be Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment, Sea of Thieves and Grounded. Similar to PlayStation's multi-platform strategy, Spencer says that Xbox has been looking at games that are more than one year old.
"When we don't damage Xbox and we can grow our business using what other platforms have to help us with that, we're going to do that," the Microsoft games boss said.
"And that's really the story behind these four games. And last thing I'll say looking forward, I think there is an interesting story for us of introducing Xbox franchises to players on other platforms to get them more interested in Xbox.
"We think there's a good brand value for Xbox there. So four games, no promise beyond that. So if you're on those other platforms and you see these four games coming, please don't take it as some signal that everything's coming. It's not. And we're going to learn."
Booty also revealed that Xbox Game Pass now has 34 million subscribers meaning that the platform has almost doubled its user base since January 2021 when the service boasted 18 million users. Diablo 4 from Blizzard is also launching into the subscription service next month.
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In the new Xbox business update podcast, the company's leadership has confirmed that four of Xbox's ecosystem exclusives will be coming to rival platforms. The business update was a response to snowballing rumors of Xbox internally planning to go fully third party.
Phil Spencer, Sarah Bond, and Matt Booty have hosted the latest official Xbox Podcast which was trailered to announce an “Xbox Business Update”. This follows days of speculation that many Xbox exclusive games might be going multi platform, such as Sea of Thieves, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and Starfield. There were even suggestions that Xbox legends such as Halo could be heading to PlayStation!
It’s been confirmed that four games that were previously released as Xbox-exclusive titles are on the way to other platforms, although it’s not been explicitly confirmed which ones they are.
There was quite a bit of uncertainty for the Xbox brand last week. I’m sure you saw the nonstop flood of rumors suggesting that Xbox would see many exclusives leave the brand for other platforms. That also left concerns that we might see Microsoft’s gaming division imploding. We even had rumors that Activision Blizzard games might not even be coming to Xbox Game Pass. But that is not the case as Phil Spencer, Sarah Bond, and Matt Booty clears the air.
Microsoft will release four games for rival platforms, two of which are service-based and the other two “smaller games that were never really meant to be built as kind of platform exclusives,” Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said in a business updated-focused edition of the Official Xbox Podcast.