During a special episode of the Official Xbox Podcast, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer confirmed that Microsoft will soon bring four unnamed Xbox exclusives to rival platforms.During the podcast, Spencer said Microsoft is not naming the four games set to launch on rival platforms, but did clarify that Starfield and Indiana Jones and The Great Circle are not going multiplatform.”So we made the decision that we’re going to take four games to the other consoles — just four games, not a change to our kind of fundamental exclusive strategy,” Spencer said. We’re making these decisions for some specific reasons. We make every decision, really, with the long-term health of Xbox in mind, and long-term health of Xbox means a growing platform, our games performing, building the best platform for creators, reaching as many players as we can.”We’re always looking to learn as a leadership team and to grow, 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.”When asked if he could reveal the four games set for other platforms, Spencer said, “I’m not going to name those games. The teams that are building those games have announced plans that are not too far away. As we know, game teams put a lot of energy into their announcements with the partners, so I don’t want to take anything away from those teams.” While Spencer did confirm that the four games did not include Starfield and the upcoming Indiana Jones and The Great Circle, The Verge reports that the Xbox exclusives set to go to rival platforms are Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment, Sea of Thieves, and Grounded. Spencer goes on to say that for the four games selected, Microsoft looked at titles that were over a year old and that a “couple of the games are community-driven games, new games, kind of first iterations of a franchise that have reached their full potential, let’s say, on Xbox and PC.” The other two games are “smaller games that were never really meant to be built as kind of platform exclusives.”While it’s not in Microsoft’s current plans to bring Starfield and Indiana Jones to rival consoles, Spencer has refused to rule out if they will go to PS5 in the future. In an interview with The Verge, Spencer said, “I don’t think we should as an industry ever rule out a game going to any other platform. We’re focused on these four games and learning from the experience.”But I don’t want to create a false expectation on those other platforms that this is somehow the first four to get over the dam and then the dam’s going to open and that everything else is coming, that’s not the plan today. “I also don’t want to mislead customers on those other platforms. We’re launching these four games, and we’re excited about it. We’re excited about the announcement and everything else, but we’ll see what happens for our business.”In a statement posted on Xbox Wire, Microsoft says, “There is no fundamental change to our approach on exclusivity,” and that “by bringing these games to more players, we not only expand the reach and impact of those titles, but this will allow us to invest in either future versions of these games, or elsewhere in our first-party portfolio.”
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