The future of Xbox is played out on Thursday night. What to expect and what changes on PS5

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The appointment with the fate of Xbox is set for Thursday evening at 9pm. Here are the most credible rumors and how the gaming scenario could change.

The future of Xbox will be revealed later this week. Moment: didn’t they launch two consoles just four years ago? And Xbox Game Pass is doing pretty well, isn’t it? It seems that Microsoft’s gaming operations are not as successful as previously thought and that the Redmond giant is moving towards a different strategy, perhaps more multiplatform, which will put an end to any debate on the console war.

It all started a couple of weeks ago, when several newspapers reported rumors about the arrival of Hi-Fi Rush and Sea of ​​Thieves on other platforms, in particular Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 5.

These rumors made sense all things considered and didn’t attract too much attention, originally: Hi-Fi Rush is a “minor” title and the live service nature of Sea of ​​Thieves ensures a healthy influx of players on a constant basis, or at least a lot to keep it afloat.

Expectations (and anxieties) —

But then more rumors spread about Xbox exclusives like Starfield and the next Indiana Jones potentially coming to PS5. Then came the news that Microsoft could be considering the decision to bring iconic franchises of the green-crusader platform, such as Gears of War and Halo, to PlayStation. And you can imagine the uproar that followed on social media and the like.

Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft Gaming, released the following statement on X/Twitter to respond to the rumors: “we are listening and we feel you. We’ve scheduled 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”.

And now, after this first preview, here is the announcement of a special episode of the Xbox podcast that will be broadcast during the week, in which “updates on the Xbox business” will be revealed.

The podcast will bring together Phil Spencer, Sarah Bond and Matt Booty to deliver what has the potential to be some pretty shocking news for the industry. According to what has been leaked from reliable sources, the first wave of Xbox games that will be released elsewhere should be made up of Hi-Fi Rush and Pentiment, while Sea of ​​Thieves could follow them during the year. But there have been hints of the possibility of receiving updates from Xbox’s hardware division as well. It’s too early to talk about next-gen yet, but it seems that Microsoft is working on a Nintendo Switch-style hybrid device for the next generation. Spencer didn’t back down from the idea, liking journalists’ tweets regarding a portable console, thus adding further fuel to the fire of the event.

A portable Xbox? —

So, what exactly can we expect from this Xbox podcast? The most likely answer is the formal announcement of the opening of the Xbox business to other console manufacturers. It doesn’t seem credible that the entire lineup of titles arriving on PS5/Switch will be revealed, because this would probably cause an excessive recoil in terms of hype for the next Xbox exclusives. It also appears that the event will reveal Microsoft’s broader gaming plans, which include cloud infrastructure updates and mobile expansion plans.

xbox game pass

An Xbox portable console to bridge the generation gap could be a solution, and Xbox has a well-established history of early reveals of new hardware, sometimes even years in advance of the final release. The idea is that, somehow, Redmond will make the news of a cross-platform release sound like good news to both new users and its established fanbase – even if, at the moment, that seems to require a incredible dose of creativity.

In any case, it is clear that these decisions are supported by high-level executives at Microsoft, who would like to expand the company’s footprint in the video game industry following its colossal wave of acquisitions. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has said in the past that he doesn’t like console exclusivity, and the company hasn’t reported Xbox Game Pass subscriber numbers for over two years and has provided data showing that sales of individual titles are in decline on its platform. Sony has also tried to dive into the world of subscriptions and service games, but maintains a solid lead on console sales mainly thanks to its exclusives.

No to monopolistic PlayStation —

Xbox’s plan to launch games on day one on Game Pass has, on the contrary, highlighted its flaws, or at least not working well enough to meet Microsoft’s expectations. A cross-platform strategy may be what Xbox needs right now, even if it comes at the cost of devaluing its brand identity. It remains true that we are enormously far from the golden days of the Xbox 360, when the productions of the Windows company were intended for a single platform and that platform was a console – and the very idea of ​​”Xbox exclusive” has lost much of its its meaning years ago. This does not change the fact that the hypothesis of a monopolistic PlayStation should not be supported in any way, primarily by Sony itself, which has shown that it does not know how to move particularly well in similar conditions during the dark days of the PS3 generation. The appointment, then, is for 9pm on Thursday 15 February.



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