Microsoft will bring four games to rival consoles, teases next-gen Xbox

Plus: Exclusive updates on Game Pass subscriptions and Phil Spencer talks to me about...Helldivers 2?

Sea of Thieves. Screenshot: Rare, Xbox Game Studios

Microsoft is bringing four games to rival consoles in a move it is framing as an experiment to reach more players.

Microsoft is not naming the games or platforms today, but Game File expects the four to be Rare’s 2020 multiplayer pirate game Sea of Thieves, Tango Gameworks’ 2023 rhythm-combat game Hi-Fi Rush, and two from Obsidian: 2022 medieval murder mystery Pentiment as well as the studio’s multiplayer survival adventure Grounded. All are from Microsoft’s first-party studios.

(I’m less clear which of those games will come to PlayStation, and which to Switch. Announcements are “not too far away,” per Microsoft. I reported back on Jan 8 that Sea of Thieves was planned for PlayStation).

The move is “not a change to our fundamental exclusive strategy,” Microsoft gaming chief Phil Spencer said in an official Xbox podcast announcing the news. He described it as yet another effort to ensure the “long-term health” of Xbox’s platform. 

“We're always looking to learn as a leadership team, and to grow,” he said. “And we think this is an interesting point in time for us to use what some of the other platforms have right now, to help grow our franchises.”

The four games are all more than a year old, and, while Microsoft didn’t name them, they went out of their way to say they’re not the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Great Circle nor last year’s Starfield.

Spencer told me in an interview ahead of the podcast’s release that the year or longer gap between a release on Xbox/PC and a release on rival consoles for these first four games isn’t meant to indicate anything about the company’s strategy with porting other future games.

“I don't know what's going to happen when we ship these four games on other platforms,” he said. “Like, [what] is the return on the investment to port them to those platforms, and do we find a community there for those games? Is that going to make sense?”

Spencer acknowledged to me that people might wonder what Microsoft is promising for future games.

“We've said from the beginning, of even the [post-deal-announcement] Bethesda… roundtable that we will take it on kind of a case by case basis. We're really focused on the best thing for the Xbox business, inclusive of platform hardware and games.”