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After a week of anticipation, we’ve finally gotten the update on Xbox’s future from the official podcast. Phil Spencer, Sarah Bond and Matt Booty got together to more or less say that only four Xbox games are going multiplatform at the present moment. The company is also still making consoles for the foreseeable future. All in all, Xbox only disrupted the status quo a fraction as much as they could have. But between Spencer’s remarks and PlayStation’s recent earnings report, I can’t help but think both of our major console companies could stand to disrupt it a little bit more.
The four games that Xbox is offering to the other consoles as tribute were selected, according to Spencer, because they had achieved all they were going to on Xbox’s platforms — “reached their full potential,” to use his words. And I couldn’t help but draw a comparison to Sony president Hiroki Totoki in the company’s recent financial Q&A. Totoki said that PlayStation is going to be more aggressive in pursuing better profit margins and noted that first-party titles only benefit these days by being multiplatform. He also made a remark about how games used to primarily sell consoles, which echoes Matt Booty saying, “It used to be that the platform was the biggest thing.” There was a curious harmony there.
To me, this seems to signal that these two companies, while they are competing for the same resource, could stand to play a bit nicer with each other. Spencer later said in an interview with Stephen Totilo that he didn’t expect Sony or Nintendo to follow Microsoft and bring their games to Xbox. I know Totoki was speaking primarily about PC when he mentioned other platforms, but Sony (like Microsoft) is facing more layoffs and shrinking profit margins — why not toss a couple of older games Xbox’s way and make a few more thousands? They could probably do so much by working together.
In personal news, I’m absolutely shocked to say this … but I will be playing Skull & Bones in the next few days. I can’t quite believe it, either honestly. I’m not saying I plan to play a lot of it. That’ll honestly depend on its first impression. But after this long and so many stories about its delays, I have to at least try it out. I also want to try out Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden, both because it looks like my kind of game and because I want to encourage the creation of any new IP.
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What to play this week
What’s new:
- Skull & Bones (yes, for real)
- Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden
- Mario Vs. Donkey Kong
- Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore
- Tomb Raider I-III Remastered
- Lysfanga: The Time Shift Warrior
- Islands of Insight
- Ultros
New on subscription services:
- Resident Evil 3 (Xbox Game Pass)
- Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (Xbox Game Pass)
- A Little To The Left (Xbox Game Pass)
- PlateUp! (Xbox Game Pass)
- Criminal Archives: Alphabetic Murders — Collector’s Edition (Prime Gaming)
- Tempest 4000 (Prime Gaming)
- Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor (GeForce Now)
- Goat Simulator 3 (GeForce Now)
- Skull and Bones (GeForce Now)
- Halo Infinite (GeForce Now)
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