None of this will help clear up speculation about its future plans, of course. The Redmond firm bobbed and weaved around the elephant in the room, suggesting there’ll still be exclusives for its own Xbox consoles – while simultaneously failing to rule anything out. Noticeably, Spencer stressed that tentpole titles Starfield and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle are not part of the aforementioned four coming to rival systems. However, in an interview with The Verge published immediately afterwards, he noted: “I don't think we should as an industry ever rule out a game going to any other platform.”
Xbox hierarchy appears to be banking on exclusivity going away entirely, as game budgets spiral out of control and publishers look to release their titles in as many places as possible. It’s true that the lines between hardware are blurring, as even Sony plans to bring more of its intellectual property to PC . Looking at the budgets attributed to major titles like Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 , and the razor-thin margins these platform holders are operating on, it does put the industry in a precarious position.
But we’re not sure Microsoft’s bizarrely structured podcast will do anything to ease the rampant rumours about Xbox’s future. Spencer and his subordinates were forced to walk a tightrope, committing to their own console while simultaneously confirming some of their games will be playable elsewhere. Officially, it’s only announcing the four titles outlined at the top of this article, but already speculation abounds about what will follow.
And that’s means the rumours are only going to continue. Spencer, like any great salesman , suggested it’ll only port more titles if this initial batch perform well; our assumption is that more games will follow, it’s just a matter of when . Without drawing out any hard lines for fans to follow, there’s going to be conjecture about every first-party title that Xbox publishes. For now, all we can really conclude is that PS5 is about to get an additional injection of games, and like we said from the start, that’s never a bad thing.
What did you make of Xbox’s business update event? Did you think it was a bunch of hot air, or has the Redmond firm successfully cleared up the rumours? Are you excited for any of the four titles rumoured to be ported to PlayStation, and why? Let us know in the comments section below.
Which of the four Xbox titles rumoured for PS5 will you buy? (1,023 votes)
Grounded 7 %Hi-Fi Rush 29 %Pentiment 16 %Sea of Thieves 12 %None of them 35 %
