Over the past week, there has been a lot of controversy swirling around Xbox. Reports surfaced that exclusives such as Gears of War, Sea of Thieves,Indiana Jones and the Great Circle,Starfield, and Hi-Fi Rush may be ported to PS5 and Nintendo Switch, indicating a future with less of an emphasis on exclusivity asXbox becomes more of a third-party publisher.
Gamers, outraged at the possibility of Xbox ‘losing’ the console war, started selling their hardware while content creators declared that they’re “not Xbox fanboy[s] anymore” (as reported byVGC). In response, Phil Spencer announced that he will host a livestream next week to clear the air, but according to The Verge reporter Tom Warren, not even employees at Xbox know what’s going to be said.
I just wanna make it very clear that most folks in Xbox don’t know the full details of what Microsoft will discuss next week. So people that are backtracking on certain stuff never really knew either.
It’s clear this isn’t going to be a clear-cut denial of the reports, at least, asSpencer said that the stream will reveal “the future of Xbox”.But the future in question is what’s up in the air. You have fans speculating the extreme possibility that Xbox will go the way of Sega and bow out of the console game, while others believe it’s simply expanding its reach by porting its biggest hits to other platforms. We won’t know for certain until the official announcement.
Some YouTubers and Xbox influencers went as far as to say that they couldn’t sleep over the news of Xbox exclusives potentially not being exclusive anymore, while others claim that there’s no longer a reason to own an Xbox.
Some vowed to stop coverage depending on what’s said next week, demanding “an absolute explanation”. Xbox creator TimDog even held a live Twitter space for seven hours discussing his feelings.
“We’re listening and we hear you,” Phil Spencer tweeted. “We’ve been planning a business update event for next week, where we look forward to sharing more details with you about our vision for the future of Xbox. Stay tuned.”
Xbox has already been branching out for years, much like PlayStation, with ports of its first-party games to PC, but the idea of porting these games onto competing consoles is proving too far for some.
