Yesterday in Nintendo’s Indie World showcase, yet another Xbox exclusive was revealed to be coming to the Switch. Earlier this year, another former exclusive, Cuphead, also made its way to the system.
However, Microsoft has recently informed gamesindustry.biz that, “We have no plans to further expand our exclusive first-party games to other consoles.”
This is a bit of a change in Microsoft’s messaging where they have been focusing on getting their games to be playable on as many platforms as they can feasibly support. Yet it seems that cross-play is still one of their focuses.
Microsoft continued, ” We continue to believe deeply in cross-play and progression of games with the right flexibility for developers to ensure a fair and fun experience.”
From that quote we can tell, this new path doesn’t include the top-selling video game of all time, Minecraft. It’s safe to assume that support for that game will continue on all major consoles and mobile devices.
The statement from Microsoft is also quite the opposite of what many rumors have been perpetuating over the past months.
The idea of X-Cloud on Switch has been rumbling in the background for a while now with absolutely no confirmation.
This unexpected news also comes on the back of the unthinkable reveal of the Microsoft IP, Banjo, in Super Smash Bros Ultimate.
However, this statement still leaves the opportunity for other services to come to non-Microsoft consoles since this statement is only in reference to porting their exclusive titles.
We already knew that developers under the umbrella of Xbox Game Studios like Obsidian and Double Fine will be able to finish up their current titles before fully focusing on making games for Xbox.
The highly anticipated titles like The Outer Worlds and Psychonauts 2 could possibly be the last titles that these developers make for Sony or Nintendo consoles for a while.
Via: gamesindustry.biz
Published: Aug 20, 2019 04:02 pm