Several exclusive Xbox titles will soon be available on competing systems, the video game business and its parent, Microsoft, revealed on Thursday.
Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer announced that four Xbox titles will no longer be exclusive in a special episode of the Official Xbox Podcast. This implies that users ought to be able to access them on the platforms of other businesses.
Although Spencer did not name the four games or give a specific release date, he did reveal that two of them will be “community-driven” games and the other two will be smaller releases.
“The groups responsible for creating those games have declared imminent plans,” he stated. “It will make sense when they come out, but I won’t be talking about the titles specifically.”
He did clarify that the Bethesda games Starfield and Indiana Jones, which are owned by Microsoft, were not included.
Laptops 1000To persuade customers to purchase the devices that include their exclusive rights, manufacturers of gaming hardware frequently license well-known video games.
Xbox appears to be reconsidering that approach based on its announcement on Thursday. Spencer stated that he thinks games that are unique to a single piece of hardware “are going to be a smaller and smaller part of the game industry” within the next five or ten years, despite Microsoft’s insistence that its exclusivity strategy has not fundamentally changed.
Microsoft has been steering clear of this already with its “Game Pass” subscription service, which functions similarly to Netflix for video games.
Activision Blizzard, a developer of video games, was recently acquired by the IT behemoth, enabling the service’s further expansion. Xbox President Sarah Bond revealed on Thursday that Diablo IV, which launches on March 28th, will be the first Activision Blizzard title available on Xbox Game Pass.
All of this is a part of our dedication to making Xbox, the Xbox experience, and the games we create as accessible as we can, according to Bond.
Activision Blizzard’s catalog, which includes popular games like Call of Duty and Overwatch in addition to Diablo, is expected to significantly improve Xbox sales, which had previously lagged behind PlayStation and Nintendo.
Laptops 1000Activision Blizzard’s influence was largely responsible for Microsoft’s Windows-led personal computer business’s revenue growth of 19% to $16.89 billion in the fourth quarter of 2023, which includes Xbox games and services. Microsoft’s Xbox-related revenue increased by 61% over that time; however, Activision Blizzard’s acquisition was responsible for 55 percentage points of that growth.
Almost two years after making the announcement, Microsoft finally paid $69 billion to acquire Activision Blizzard in October of last year. Due to concerns about competition, the IT giant with headquarters in Redmond, Washington, had to overcome strong objections from rivals and antitrust authorities worldwide.
For instance, Sony informed regulators that it was concerned Microsoft would either refuse to provide popular Activision games for its PlayStation gaming system or provide inferior titles. However, Microsoft continuously defended its strategy as beneficial for gaming, claiming that its objective was to bring Activision titles to more people on more platforms rather than attempting to take those games away from other console makers, as it attempted to convince judges and regulators to approve the Activision purchase.
