After weeks of rumors, we’ve finally heard it from the horse’s mouth: Xbox is going to be sending “just four” previously-exclusive titles over to rival platforms in the near future. Those platforms will be PlayStation and Nintendo Switch, and while the identities of these four Xbox exclusives weren’t revealed, reports suggest they will be Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment, Sea of Thieves, and Grounded.
Speaking on a special edition of the Official Xbox Podcast, top dog Phil Spencer confirms what we all expected when it comes to Xbox exclusives. “We’ve made the decision that we’re going to take four games to the other consoles,” Spencer says. “Just four games. [This is] not a change to our fundamental exclusive strategy, we’re making these decisions for some specific reasons.” So sorry PS5 fans, you’re not guaranteed to get all the best Xbox games appearing on your platform.
Throughout the course of the podcast, Spencer explains that these games were picked because they are either live service titles that could benefit from tapping into a new, bigger pool of players by expanding, or that they have simply “reached their full potential” within the Xbox ecosystem.
As mentioned, Spencer (nor Xbox president Sarah Bond and Xbox Games Studios head Matt Booty, who join him in the podcast) reveal the names of these four games, but sources close to The Verge seemingly have. The games the Verge lists also match up with some loose descriptions Spencer gives about the four exclusives involved.
Two of them are described as “community-driven” games – which The Verge believes are Sea of Thieves and Grounded – while the other two are “smaller” titles – which should be the heavily-leaked Hi-Fi Rush and Pentiment. Spencer also confirms all four games making the move are over a year old, which again lines up with The Verge’s list.
Spencer does officially rule out Starfield and the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Great Circle as two new Xbox games that won’t be making the journey over to PlayStation or Nintendo Switch.
Official announcements for the four games “are not too far away”, with the teams behind each game having their own timings and plans to reveal the news to gamers.
So, the rumors were true – Xbox is giving up some of its exclusivity clout to try and find some new players (and new revenue) for some of its first-party games. The news that it’s “just four games” and that it doesn’t mark a massive shift for exclusivity will go down well with many Xbox players, while PlayStation fans may be somewhat disappointed that the likes of Starfield were ruled out. Nevertheless, if The Verge’s reporting is on the money, four truly excellent games will be competing for a spot on our best PS5 games list in the near future.
During the podcast, the future of hardware was also discussed, and Microsoft is claiming that the next-gen Xbox will be one of the biggest technological leaps between console generations we’ve ever seen.