Well, that was weird.
Xbox’s big, much-awaited “business update” came to pass on Thursday afternoon in podcast form. After a couple weeks of rumor-mongering alleging that certain Xbox-exclusive titles would start appearing on consoles like PS5 and Switch, Xbox head Phil Spencer confirmed as much in the podcast. However, he didn’t confirm exactly what we expected him to confirm.
Specifically, four mystery Xbox titles will come to other consoles at some point in the near future. Spencer refused to specify which games they are, but he did clarify that Starfield and the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Great Circle are not in that group, as was previously rumored. He did not comment on the other rumors suggesting Hi-Fi Rush and Sea of Thieves were part of the initiative.
That’s not all, though. The Xbox podcast also confirmed that Diablo IV will be the first Activision Blizzard game to hit Game Pass following Xbox’s blockbuster acquisition of the Call of Duty publisher last year. You can play that game on Game Pass starting on March 28. First-party Xbox games will continue to launch on Game Pass on day one, and Xbox will continue to have a “robust and innovative multi-year hardware roadmap,” whatever that means.
So, in short, a few Xbox games are coming to PS5 and/or Switch, but we don’t know which ones. We can rule out Starfield and Indiana Jones, at least. There will continue to be Xbox hardware, and Game Pass will continue to operate as it has for the last few years. Also, Game Pass will remain exclusive to Xbox and PC.
This isn’t quite the explosive announcement that the gaming community had been expecting for the last couple of weeks, which is probably for the best. At the moment, it doesn’t seem like Xbox is exiting the console business or anything like that. There will just be a few games on other platforms…for now.
