Sea of Thieves wasn’t the only Xbox exclusive reported to be eyeing other horizons: Hi-Fi Rush was rumored to be coming to Nintendo Switch too. In light of this, it’s easy to see how Nadella’s comments might look. It’s entirely possible, however, that Nadella was referring just to Activision when talking about being a good publisher on Sony, Nintendo, PCs, and Xbox.
After all the acquisitions Microsoft has made and the work it’s put into bolstering its line-up of upcoming Xbox exclusives, would it be diluting that hard work by then putting those exclusives on other platforms?
Being the biggest video game acquisition of all time, it’s only fair that Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard should be a suitably lengthy process, but we all sat through that long, long process and saw frequent confirmation that Microsoft would keep Call of Duty on PlayStation. Sony and Microsoft finally signed a Call of Duty deal last year in which Microsoft promised to keep the first-person shooter series on PlayStation consoles once the acquisition went through.
Earlier in the year, Microsoft signed a “binding ten-year contract” to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo platforms. And when Microsoft later completed that $69 billion acquisition, Spencer explained that Microsoft had started work to bring “beloved Activision, Blizzard, and King franchises to Game Pass and other platforms.”
Xbox often talks about making games available everywhere possible, and obviously there would be benefits there for Microsoft. But the Xbox team also seems to be putting a lot of work into building up the Xbox brand and attempting to meet player concerns. After discussion around Xbox’s lack of exclusives over the last few years, especially when taking into account that they released a new generation of consoles, 2024 has started off with a Developer Direct highlighting several big Xbox exclusives coming this year.
After a long time of hearing about acquisitions, we’re hopefully gearing up to see the fruits of this labour with more great Game Pass games and more big Xbox releases. Xbox kept Starfield as an exclusive (love it or hate it, it was a big get for Xbox). The new Indiana Jones game was initially meant to come to multiple consoles, but this was changed to make the game exclusive to Xbox and PC after Microsoft’s acquisition of Bethesda. And, although it’s still years away, Elder Scrolls 6 is Xbox exclusive according to Microsoft’s own court document.
That’s not to say Microsoft won’t bring any of it’s first-party games to other platforms in the future, but it’s also possible that these will be the exception, rather than the rule.
All this to say that if the bigger worry about Xbox exclusives on other platforms is that Xbox is conceding ground compared to its competitors, it doesn’t seem like this is the case. Rather than the Xbox brand shrinking, it looks to be aiming to get bigger and better than ever.
