During a new episode of the Official Xbox Podcast, Head of Xbox Phil Spencer announced that four Xbox games are coming to Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 5 in the near future. These four games are part of Microsoft’s initiative to grow the Xbox brand outside of consoles.
“So we made the decision that we’re going to take four games to the other consoles– just four games, not a change to our kind of fundamental exclusive strategy, Phil Spencer said. “We’re making these decisions for some specific reasons. We make every decision, really, with the long-term health of Xbox in mind. And long-term health of Xbox means a growing platform, our games performing, building the best platform for creators, reaching as many players as we can.”
Spencer did not name the four games that will be coming to Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 5 during the podcast. However, Final Weapon’s report on Hi-Fi Rush suggests this will be one of the major titles coming to both platforms. Spencer reiterates that only four games will be brought over, and Starfield and the new Indiana Jones games are not among them. Spencer doesn’t rule out the possibility in a new interview at The Verge:
I don’t think we should as an industry ever rule out a game going to any other platform. We’re focused on these four games and learning from the experience.
But I don’t want to create a false expectation on those other platforms that this is somehow the first four to get over the dam and then the dam’s going to open and that everything else is coming, that’s not the plan today. I also don’t want to mislead customers on those other platforms. We’re launching these four games, and we’re excited about it. We’re excited about the announce and everything else, but we’ll see what happens for our business.
The Four Potential PS5 and Switch Games from Xbox
According to Spencer, two of the Xbox multiplatform games coming to PS5 and Switch are “community-driven” games, and the other two are “smaller” games. Once more, Spencer did not state which games these will be. However, rumors and a recent report from The Verge share some insight into these four games.
Firstly, the community-driven games are most likely Grounded and Sea of Thieves, according to sources close to the matter at The Verge. The other two games are the long-rumored Hi-Fi Rush and Pentiment. More official details are coming soon, so stay tuned.
Update: Famitsu claims the four Xbox games are in fact Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment, Grounded and Sea of Thieves.
“We think it’s important that these service-based games that have communities behind them, that they can have confidence that they’re going to exist in the future, Phil Spencer said, “So two of them kind of community-driven games that will end up on other platforms and give us the ability to continue to invest in them. We think that’s great for the business and great for the communities– more players to play with.”
Spencer continued, “Two of the other games are smaller games that were never really meant to be built as kind of platform exclusives and all the fanfare that goes around that, but games that our teams really wanted to go build that we love supporting creative endeavors across our studios regardless of size. And as they’ve realized their full potential on Xbox and PC, we see an opportunity to utilize the other platforms as a place to just drive more business value out of those games, allowing us to invest in maybe future iterations of those, so equals to those, or just other games like that in our portfolio.”
