Microsoft Will Launch Four 1st-Party Titles for Other Platforms

It’s official: Starfield, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle are not coming to PS5 or Nintendo Switch in the foreseeable future. However, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer did confirm that four other titles would launch this year for other platforms.

Announcements for the titles are coming down the line, but Spencer confirmed that they’re “over a year old” and have been on Xbox and PC, with two being “community-driven”. “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.

“There’s always growth, franchises that we obviously want to continue to invest in. Part of having the ability to continue to invest is that the businesses behind those franchises continue. We think it’s important that these service-based games have communities behind them, that they can have confidence that they’re going to exist in the future.”

The other two games are smaller and “were never really meant to be built as kind of platform exclusives and all the fanfare that goes around that, but games that our teams really wanted to go build that we love supporting creative endeavors across our studios regardless of size.”

Said titles have “realized their full potential on Xbox and PC, we see an opportunity to utilize the other platforms as a place to just drive more business value out of those games, allowing us to invest in maybe future iterations of those, so sequels to those, or just other games like that in our portfolio.”

“When we don’t damage Xbox, and we can grow our business using what other platforms have to help us, we’re going to do that.”

As per rumors, Hi-Fi Rush and Pentiment could be the smaller titles, while Sea of Thieves is one of the “community-driven” games. The former two are reportedly coming soon to PS5 and Nintendo Switch, while the latter is out later this year. Grounded is the second service-driven title per sources speaking to The Verge, though when it could launch remains to be seen. Stay tuned for further announcements in the coming months.

In other news, Game Pass has hit 34 million subscribers on PC and Xbox. Diablo 4 will also be coming to the service next month.