Xbox confirms four of its games are coming to other platforms

After weeks of rumours, Xbox has confirmed that it will release four of its games on other platforms.

Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer announced the news alongside other Xbox leadership in a new episode of the Official Xbox Podcast. While he wouldn’t confirm what these games would be, he did note that they wouldn’t be last year’s Starfield or the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. He also didn’t mention specific platforms, but speculation is that titles would come to both PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch.

Elaborating on the business move, Spencer said the company looked at titles that have already been on Xbox and PC for over a year. Two of these will be live service titles focused on “community,” which lines up with rumours that the multiplayer pirate sim Sea of Thieves will come to PS5 and Switch.

Additionally, he said the other two games would be smaller fan-favourite titles, which seemingly would be Bethesda’s acclaimed Pentiment and Hi-Fi Rush, as previously rumoured.

Spencer added that Xbox has no multiplatform releases to confirm beyond those four games, but reassured fans that they shouldn’t look at these titles as evidence that all of its games will suddenly come to all platforms. “Four games, no promise beyond that,” said Spencer. “So if you’re on those other platforms and you see these four games coming, please don’t take it as some signal that everything’s coming. It’s not.”

Overall, Xbox says bringing these games to more platforms is a necessary part of the company’s larger goal to reach more players and grow the brand.

“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 game industry,” noted Spencer. These comments echo those made by Sony president Hiroki Totoki earlier this week. As part of the Japanese tech giant’s latest quarterly earnings release, Totoki expressed interest in bringing more PlayStation games to other platforms, including PC.

Of course, the company reiterated that it still has many games planned only for Xbox and PC, several of which were detailed in last month’s Developer_Direct presentation. These include Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Avowed and Ara: History Untold, which are all coming this year.

Elsewhere in the podcast, Xbox said it will continue to support Game Pass alongside confirmation that it’s reached 34 million subscribers. It reiterated that the service will continue to only be available within its ecosystem — on Xbox and PC hardware and mobile devices through streaming.

As part of its Game Pass discussions, the company noted that Diablo IV will come to the service next month. This will be the first of many Activision Blizzard titles to hit the service following Microsoft’s acquisition of the publisher in October.

Finally, the company teased plans for multiple new pieces of hardware. Some of this will be detailed later this year and is expected to be one of the mid-gen console refreshes that leaked last year, while the other is a next-gen system. The company didn’t say anything about the former but did confirm that the latter will deliver the “largest technical leap you will have ever seen in a hardware generation.”

Update: 15/02/2024 at 3:28pm ET — Added more details from the podcast.