Microsoft bringing Xbox games to PlayStation and Nintendo, amid major strategy shift
Four of Xbox’s previously exclusive games will be making the jump to PlayStation and Nintendo’s consoles, Microsoft has announced. It was also suggested that the company will share details of the next version of its Xbox console before the end of 2024.
In a video podcast with other Xbox executives, the CEO of Microsoft’s gaming division, Phil Spencer, did not name the four titles in question, but said they are each more than a year old. Two are live-service games and two are smaller titles, with multiplayer pirate adventure Sea of Thieves and musical action game Hi-Fi Rush two likely candidates. It was confirmed that neither last year’s space opus Starfield nor the forthcoming Indiana Jones game will be multiplatform.
The move marks a major shift in strategy, away from an emphasis on selling hardware such as the Xbox and towards increasing sales of first-party games. Microsoft consoles have struggled against PlayStations since the original Xbox launched in 2001. The PlayStation 2, still the best-selling games console of all time, outsold it by 155m units to 25m. The Xbox 360, released in 2005, initially outsold the PlayStation 3 before again falling behind. The arrival of the Xbox One in 2013 saw the company change strategy and attempt to market the machine as a digital-first multimedia device – which alienated core gaming fans and gave the PlayStation 4 a huge boost. At the end of that generation, PS4 consoles had sold more than 117m units while the Xbox One managed 58.6m.
In 2017, Microsoft switched strategies again, launching its Game Pass subscription service, which gave Xbox owners access to hundreds of games for a fixed monthly fee – a model inspired by streaming TV platforms. The service has since grown to 34 million subscribers. Most first-party Xbox games have since launched on the service, which was expanded to PC two years later.
In an effort to shore up its gaming business, Microsoft has been on a long acquisition spree, purchasing Minecraft creator Mojang in 2014 for $2.5bn, Elder Scrolls and Fallout studio Bethesda as part of Zenimax Media for $7.5bn in 2020, and Call of Duty and Candy Crush publisher Activision Blizzard King for $68.7bn in 2023, as well as several other smaller studios. The Activision Blizzard purchase was by far the biggest deal in games industry history, and some of its games will soon be coming to Game Pass, Sarah Bond, the president of Xbox, announced on Friday – starting with Diablo IV on 28 March. During the process of acquiring Activision Blizzard – which involved months of legal and regulatory wrangling – Microsoft committed to keeping the company’s most popular games, such as Call of Duty, available on other consoles.
Bond reiterated that Microsoft has no intention of exiting the console business, contradicting rumours that had been swirling for the last month. “There’s some exciting stuff coming out in hardware that we’re going to share this holiday,” she said.