Xbox Hints At Making Games For PlayStation and Nintendo Consoles

In a new interview, one of the leads of the Xbox team has suggested and teased that first-party games from its studios may wind up releasing on other consoles, such as the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4. However, it also sounds like the biggest franchises may stay put on Xbox and PC, which presumably means we won't be getting Halo, Gears of War, are any of the marquee Xbox games on competing consoles anytime soon.

More specifically, while speaking with Game Informer, head of Xbox Game Studios Matt Booty said that certain developers and certain games may release beyond the Xbox and PC ecosystem. For example, newly-acquired developers like Obsidian and Double Fine may continue to make games for other platforms in the future. According to Booty, it's not about having blanket policies, but making decisions on a case-by-case basis, and doing what's right for the game in question.

"I think that the question is less binary about, 'should it be on Switch, should it be on PlayStation?' and more, 'does it make sense for the franchise,'" said Booty when asked about first-party Xbox games coming to Nintendo and PlayStation platforms.

Booty continued, providing more insight into his perspective on the matter:

"In other words, is it a kind of game where it would benefit from the network effect of being on a bunch of different platforms, or is it a game where we can best support it by putting resources and making sure that our platforms, things like xCloud and Game Pass and Xbox Live, are really leaning in to support the game?"

From the sounds of it, smaller titles could be getting the multi-platform approach, and possibly multiplayer games too? Unfortunately, it's a bit vague right now. That said, if there's one franchise that will likely stay multi-platform it's the best-selling game of all-time: Minecraft. Keeping the series off Nintendo and PlayStation platforms leaves way too much money on the table. And it probably wouldn't move many Xbox units off the shelves either. People would simply play it on PC.

"With something like Minecraft, I think it was a no-brainer that we were never going to try and take anything from players that existed on those platforms, and certainly we've added platforms since that acquisition," said Booty. "But then obviously we're going to have our big franchises like Forza, Halo and Sea of Thieves, where those games are designed from the outset to really exist on Xbox, I think that will continue."

As you can see, there's no guarantees, but if you were hoping to play Halo on a PlayStation, well, maybe one day, but it doesn't sound like it's part of the pipeline.

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