What are the pros and cons to Microsoft putting their games elsewhere?

There have been rumours for years that games made by Xbox would find their way onto more platforms, and we first saw this happening when Ori and Cuphead came to Switch. While those games were published by Xbox, they were not made by them, so a few rare examples do not make a trend, but now people are claiming bigger games like Starfield, Sea of Thieves and the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Great Circle are all coming to PlayStation. Does a move like this make sense for Xbox, let’s break it down.

Why they won’t do it?

The entire reason for Xbox to be making games is to get you playing their content, within their ecosystem. That system can mean a console box, it can mean via the cloud on your phone or tv, and of course even on a PC. Once you are ‘in’ their world, then it’s much easier for you to stay there, and they can then sell you more accessories and such. Being in their world also means they can see what people are playing easier, which helps make decisions around investing in game X make more or less sense. If they can convince you that their next game, which will have 2 years of content to enjoy and then lead to a sequel or spin-off is worth it, then they will do all they can to make it happen.

The other side is of course that with an exclusive, if you want to play it then you need to buy in to their world, complete at the price they set for every part of it. That means if you want Halo 7 and it is only going to Xbox 5, then you need to buy a new console and then for the next game and the cycle continues. I mean if you can get the game you want on any platform, then you buy the platform you want or stick to the one you already own, it’s pretty simple stuff.

Why they might do it?

The major reason to release their games on other platforms is simply to make more money. They might dress it up and say to reach out to fans of character X or game series Y, but its money pure and simple. Xbox is the third best selling console and when there are only three, that means they are in last place. Their major strength is with their online infrastructure, which is why Xbox Cloud Gaming works so well for them, but they have not been able to achieve the same results with the dedicated boxes.

If they made a game and spent $200m US dollars to make it, at $60 USD per copy sold, they would need to sell roughly 3.5 million copies to make back that spend. Of course, Game Pass would mean that number could be reached, but Game Pass is not a sale, it’s a service and people opting in for it may not be after this new game. Even if you slash 1m from your potential sales bucket for existing Game Pass subs, that still leaves you with 2.5 million to sell, which is not really a big number these days, except for Xbox it is. Reports say that in the USA PlayStation outsells Xbox 3 to 1, with Xbox sitting around 8m Series X|S consoles sold since release, compared to the 23m from PlayStation.

If Xbox make a game and know on console it will sell 1m, PC will get them another 750k, but we estimate they need 3.5m to break even, that number has to come from somewhere and while they could make the console cheaper to try and draw in new owners, that is a short term move that may not payout in the long term. So porting the game to another platform is the next and most straightforward option.

Xbox are already multiplatform

People tend to forget as well, but Xbox is already a multiplatform game developer and I am not talking about their random mobile games. For years now Xbox has been producing their games for both console and PC, with the Xbox Play Anywhere program kicking it off. Long before then however we started to see games like Halo get a PC port years after the fact, that one made possible by Gearbox, but now it’s almost a rare occurrence for a game not to hit both at the same time. There are of course some titles like Age of Empires IV or Microsoft Flight Simulator, which launched on PC and then waited a fair while for their console ports, but mostly it’s the same day for all games.

We also need to remember that during the GameBoy Advance and Nintendo DS eras, Microsoft was making new entries in series they owned for those platforms. Diddy Kong Racing and Viva Pinata for the DS and a Banjo-Kazooie game for the GBA, these were developed by Microsoft owned Rare and published either by Nintendo or THQ. So they are not against putting characters they own (the side characters in DKR, not Diddy himself) on platforms they don’t, or at least they were not too long ago.

One could make the argument that Fallout 76, Minecraft and Elder Scrolls Online also make them a multiplatform developer, just in terms of consoles alone, but here is the rub there. All those games were released onto other platforms long before Xbox bought the respective company making them. Since Xbox bought Bethesda, there have been no new titles made by the company for PlayStation. Yes there were the two games Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo, but both were in development long before the buyout and Xbox were contractually obligated to ensure their release. You could argue as well that the recent Quake remasters also hit all consoles, but again remasters not new games. Xbox making games for console and PC already makes a multiplatform developer, but that is not what people are after, they want games on other consoles.

Does it matter if Xbox put games on other consoles?

Honestly it doesn’t and anyone who claims otherwise will complain just to complain. Xbox are not going to drop their own hardware or services, so fans of those can relax. Even if Xbox announce this week that Starfield is coming to PlayStation 5 on November 11th 2024, Xbox and PC fans will still have had a full year and change of the game.

The entire Microsoft strategy has been for years to put the software where the people are, it is why you can get Microsoft Word on your phone, tablet, computer and any web-enabled device, alongside MacOS machines. Microsoft don’t want you to buy a single piece of software once every 4 years, they would rather have you pay a monthly fee for it and that is working for them. It is the same with the console strategy, Xbox Cloud Gaming made it happen, you now don’t need to own a Xbox console to play Starfield, if you have a TV or even a phone, you can play that game at any time.

Also, outside of Sea of Thieves, all the other games that people say are going to PlayStation or Switch, are made by Bethesda, which is owned by Microsoft and not the Xbox group. Yes Zenimax reports to Microsoft Gaming lead Phil Spencer, but in terms of ownership, Xbox and Bethesda are on the same tier, both under the larger Microsoft umbrella. So they might operate a little differently to what people expect.

Day one on all platforms?

Finally, does this mean that The Elder Scrolls VI will be day one on all platforms, heck no. If Xbox decide to bring Bethesda games or Blizzard or even Obsidian made titles to more than just Xbox Series or PC, odds are that it will take time. Currently, the PlayStation strategy is that there big first party games launch on their hardware and then may eventually come to PC. Take a look at Horizon Forbidden West, it launched back in 2022 for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 and now the PC release is coming in a few months. Xbox are ahead of PlayStation in that regard, but what it means is that if you want to enjoy a PlayStation Studios made title at or near release, then you had best get your hands on a PlayStation console.

If Xbox start to bring their games to other platforms, I suspect its going to be the same way that PlayStation treats PC. If you want to play The Elder Scrolls VI at launch, you get a Xbox console or a PC, else you wait 12-18 months for it to be brought over to PlayStation or Nintendo, depending on their consoles at the time of course. This is of course going to be dependent on the game, should Diablo V be announced in a few years, the odds of that not hitting PlayStation day one are slim to none as the studio has seen great success with its console ports.

Of course, all of this is pure speculation and people need to remember that until a formal announcement is made by Xbox, getting hyped up over what someone has been told, is not a good thing. When I was growing up the thing was always ‘I heard from someone’s uncle who worked at Nintendo’ and now that is has been replaced with ‘a unnamed sourced from within the company’. Taking rumours to be gospel will almost always set you up for disappointment and while it is fun to imagine them being true, just remember until something is official, it can always change.