Yesterday the shocking news that Xbox was planning to roll out lot of its first-party titles to other platforms came out. There still hasnt been much clarification on if the rumors are 100% concrete, but to quote Tom Warren, where there’s smoke there’s fire. The rumors started circulating weeks ago with Hi-Fi Rush, an Xbox exclusive that was nominated for game of the year last year, was coming to both PlayStation and The Nintendo Switch. Well yesterday rumors reached a boiling point with more titles rumored to be going multi platform such as Starfield and the yet to release Indiana Jones And The Great Circle coming to PlayStation. Xbox fans are beyond confused as this was meant to be a time for the console to be taken more seriously in regards of playerbase and console exclusives. In fact a large reason for the Bethesda acquisition was to have Starfield, one of the most anticipated titles of the year, be an Xbox console exclusive. Is Xbox really willing to ditch their plan for a completely new one despite less than a year after some major acquisitions? Well, we finally got someone to address the turmoil, that being CEO of Microsoft gaming Phil Spencer.
Spencer, who has been the face most people associate with Xbox, has been an incredible leader for Microsoft. Leading them to a new age of acquisitions and new business strategies. He responded to a lot of the anger from fans with a message on twitter earlier today. In the message Spencer made sure to acknowledge the fans out cry and telling them that they are being heard, at the same time announcing that there will be a business event update next week to cover things that they have been working on for a long time. The important part to point out is that he mentioned these plans, not confirmed to be the cross platform situation, has been in planning for some time.
Overall this idea of multiplatform has both pros and cons like all other situations. We can tell at the moment what the desired outcome is but theres still a lot of room for things to happen. The exclusives going multi platform would be great for the players in the short term as it would encourage PlayStation players to try the Xbox titles, but no guarantee from Sony that they would also bring their exclusives to be multiplatform. Many have brought up the idea that Xbox following through with this plan would lead to a worst off video game industry, claiming that it would cause industry frontrunner Sony to stagnate itself due to the lack of competition. Either way there will be much revealed next week, probably some industry-shaking news.