Microsoft Won’t Continue With Cross-Platform Editions of Xbox Exclusives
If you are a Nintendo player, you may be eagerly awaiting Ori and the Blind Forest on Nintendo Switch. In fact, you may have been excited about all the cooperation between Microsoft and Nintendo over the past year. But should you be looking forward to more of the same in the future? Not necessarily. Microsoft appears to be backtracking on its efforts to collaborate in support of cross-platform editions of Xbox exclusives.
What Microsoft Said About Xbox Exclusives on Other Platforms
Providing a statement directly to gamesindustry.biz, Microsoft said:
“The past year has been an exciting time for us as we have more than doubled the internal creative teams making up Xbox Game Studios. As these new studios transitioned in, we were aware of some existing commitments to other platforms and will honor them. However, going forward these new studios will focus on making games for our platforms. We have no plans to further expand our exclusive first party games to other consoles. We continue to believe deeply in cross play and progression of games with the right flexibility for developers to insure a fair and fun experience.”
This is somewhat confusing, being as it almost seems to contradict what Xbox Game Studios boss Matt Booty said in the video below:
In reference to releasing Xbox Game Studios titles across multiple platforms, Booty said, “I think that the question is less binary about, ‘should it be on Switch, should it be on PlayStation?’ and more, ‘does it make sense for the franchise.’”
So how do we make sense of Microsoft trying to pull in two directions at once? Well, our guess is that the company simply is explaining it is going to return to keeping games developed exclusively for Xbox on Xbox—not that all first party games are going to become Xbox exclusives. Hopefully Microsoft will clarify soon. Keep checking back with us for more updates.