Xbox
Hi-Fi Rush and Pentiment will be the first games to arrive on PS5 and Nintendo Switch, according to The Verge
They would not be the only ones, with other releases such as Sea of Thieves, Starfield or Indiana Jones and the Great Circle planned.
Next Thursday we will discover the mystery that has surrounded the future of Xbox in recent weeks. Tim Stuart’s words months ago did not raise much dust, but the rumors that emerged during this month of February indicate that Microsoft would be ready to bring some of its exclusives to other platforms such as PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch. Everything points to the podcast with Phil Spencer, Sarah Bond, and Matt Booty confirming this radical change in strategy, but until then, it’s all speculation as to whether it will happen, and if so, which games will be the first to arrive.
The new direction of Xbox
As can be read in The Verge, in an article entitled “Microsoft prepares to take Xbox everywhere,” specialized journalist Tom Warren assures that, according to his sources, the first games to arrive would be Hi-Fi Rush and Pentiment. The first is considered one of the great sleepers of 2023, developed by Tango Gameworks, while the second is a peculiar narrative adventure set in Central Europe in the Middle Ages, developed by Obsidian Entertainment, both studios under the label of Xbox Game Studios.
As Warren explains, the stagnation in the growth of Xbox Game Pass would be the main reason for this new strategy, with more games in the chamber to reach the platforms that until now were considered competition, as Tim Stuart himself said in November. Among them is Sea of Thieves, in addition to two games from Bethesda Game Studios as Starfield and the upcoming and promising Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, from the hand of Machine Games, developers of Wolfenstein.
According to official data from Microsoft itself and other data provided by analysts, since the company has not provided them for months, Xbox Game Pass would have grown by 28% in the fiscal year ending June 2022, far from the expected 33%. Something has shifted at Microsoft since the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and in addition to the nearly 2,000 layoffs that took place in January, a structural change in the business model is now on the horizon, or at least that is what everything that has happened in recent weeks points to.