Starfield
Since Microsoft has taken its time to apparently gather its thoughts as its fan base melts away from rumors and speculation, it’s down to a fleet of insiders fighting each other over what they’ve heard or haven’t heard about what’s going on. .
The list of games Microsoft is considering for cross-platform is broad and comes from many different sources. Hi-Fi Rush and Sea of Thieves seem almost guaranteed at this point, but three other games, Starfield, Indiana Jones, and Gears of War have been “reviewed” in the pile, each reported by different source.
The original report came from XboxEra and was later confirmed by a different insider, NatetheHate. However, now NatetheHate is retraction backs up his claim, saying it’s false. In the meantime, XboxEra made a statement about this development, indicating that they are not backing down at all from their original claim, even though Nate has retracted his:
“No, not a bit. We’re sticking with our report and you can see that Nate has completely backed down and made it clear that he was only talking about himself…I trust Jon, he’s been working on this for a while and has been backed up by a lot of other people with similar information.”
Starfield
Starfield is probably The key game in this overall discussion of Xbox taking games across multiple platforms, as it is likely to end up as their highest profile exclusive of this current console generation and has been repeatedly sold as an exclusive as a new Xbox IP wanted full control, unlike with the existing ones he bought like Call of Duty. Sending it to PlayStation would break that promise and suggest a “record” Game Pass launch, and the minimal sales weren’t enough for how big this game should be.
But if Starfield not Come PlayStation, this might indicate no other bigger games either, and if this just stays as Hi-Fi Rush and Sea of Thieves, it would be a lot less important.
The problem with these reports is that everything can still be in flux. A lot of it is that Microsoft is “considering” or “planning” the idea of an exclusive release elsewhere, which is no guarantee that it will. And it’s especially not a guarantee, given the extreme reaction they’ve seen from Xbox fans to even rumors of it, which may have caused them to change course. Although when a $3 trillion company wants to do something, it usually will.
I argue that it would be a mistake to start shipping huge Xbox games to PlayStation like Starfield, but we don’t know if Microsoft will agree. Either way, one insider here is going to be right and one is going to be wrong, and even if this was heavily considered and ruled against, it’s not how Microsoft would actually explain it. We’ll find out next week. It can. Let’s hope.
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