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Xbox has confirmed on its promised podcast that four specific games are going multiformat in the near future. However, it hadn’t yet said which titles those would be.
Phil Spencer revealed the news on the Xbox Podcast as previously promised – but did confirm that the four games won’t include Starfield or Indiana Jones. He said “I’m not going to name those games. The teams that are building those games have announce plans that are not too far away.”
“As we know game teams put a lot of energy into their announcements with their partners, so I don’t want to take anything away from those teams, so I won’t be talking about the titles specifically, but I think when they come out, it’ll make sense.”
It also wasn’t clarified which platforms specifically these games would be coming to. However, Phil explained that the games were picked for a reason because of several criteria. “We looked at games that are over a year old- so they’ve been on Xbox and PC for a while. A couple of the games are community-driven games.”
He also mentioned that those two games were “First iterations of a franchise that have reached their full potential, I’d say on Xbox and PC – but there’s always growth. Franchises that we obviously want to continue to invest in” and will “give us the ability to continue to invest in them” by giving them “more players to play with”.
However, the other two games he noted were “two smaller games that were never built to be platform exclusives” and said “As they’ve realised their full potential on Xbox and PC, we see an opportunity to utilise the other platforms as a way to drive more business value out of those games”.
On why the decision was made to bring these games to other platforms, Phil explained. “The fundamental decision driver for any decision we make, for anything we talk about today is the long term health of Xbox.”
“I do have a fundamental belief that, over the next five or ten years, exclusive games – games that are exclusive to one piece of hardware – are going to be a smaller and smaller part of the games industry. And that’s not some great insight, because if you look at the last ten years (…) it’s a natural place.”
“Looking forward, I think there is an interesting story for us there for introducing Xbox franchises to players on other platforms to get them more interested in Xbox.” Phil emphasised though that it was just these four games for now – and that fans shouldn’t take those four games as “a signal that everything is coming, it’s not.”
In fact, he claimed that this announcement meant there was “no fundamental change” to how Xbox thinks about exclusivity, and that the company will keep Game Pass as an Xbox and PC exclusive bonus – so it may be disappointing news for those hoping the subscription service could pop up elsewhere.
Also during the Xbox podcast, the company confirmed it was brining Activision Blizzard games to Xbox Game Pass following the closure of the Xbox Activision Blizzard deal at the tail end of last year. First up will be Diablo 4 coming to Xbox Game Pass on March 28.
