By Kevin Torres, Contributing Writer
Xbox made a video in a format podcast to promote their message and tell their viewers that they are focus on eliminating exclusivity, preservation of video games, cross-play and cross-save, and the Game Pass.
On the topic of exclusivity, Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft Gaming, tackles the rumors of all the alleged first party Xbox games coming to PlayStation 5, and squashing them by saying that they would be taking four exclusive games and porting them to other consoles.
It was later confirmed in their official website announcement that the four games are: Sea of Thieves, Grounded, Pentiment, and Hi-Fi Rush.
Spencer goes on to say that two of them, most likely Grounded and Sea of Thieves, were allowed to break free to grow their community, so anyone could enjoy the game, saying “We think that these services-based game have communities behind them, that they can have confidence that they’re going to exist in the future.”
While the other two, most likely Hi-Fi Rush and Pentiment, were never meant to be platform exclusives, Spencer said “They were never really meant to be built as consoles exclusive and all the fanfare that goes around that but games that our teams really wanted to go build that we love to support creative endeavors across our studios regardless of size.”
And while Spencer then said that in five to ten years exclusive games are going to be a small part of the industry, it is important to note this statement does not apply to every game in the Xbox catalogue. First party games, such as Indiana Jones, Starfield, and the future Elder Scroll game, are not part of the multiplatform idea.
The Elder Scrolls, a game that has a history of being multiplatform, will become an Xbox exclusive as The Verge, in which they cited a document, courtesy of the FTC v. Microsoft case, states that Elder Scrolls VI will be a console exclusive.
In addition, Sony and Nintendo have a 10-year agreement with Microsoft to have Call of Duty on their platforms.
With the talk of the industry’s focus on exclusivity dwindling away, cross-save and cross-play were topics that were quickly touched on. Matt Booty, president of gaming content and studios, said that those features would connect the gaming communities, allowing friends to play together, regardless of their platform.
“We’ve sort of seen this inversion over the last five years where it used to be that the platform was the biggest thing, and the games would tuck within the platform” Booty said, “Today, big games like a Roblox or a Fortnite can actually be bigger than any one platform.”
He then continued to say their core principles are all their games will be on the Xbox platform, all their games will be on Game Pass Day One, and Game Pass will only be on Xbox.
With the purchase of Activision | Blizzard, Sarah Bond announced that Diablo IV would be added to Game Pass, setting a precedent of what will happen to games after they are acquired by Microsoft.
Preservation was also swiftly touched on in the way of backwards compatibility and keeping services working, so people could play as long as they can. They did not touch on physical media preservation, especially because part of the focus on this podcast was to talk about Game Pass, how it has grown, the versatility with its platform and cloud, it would logically replace physical media.
