• Head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, confirmed that Microsoft will hold a business update event to unpack the “future of Xbox”.
• This week information surfaced online that the gaming division of the company was readying to release PS5 ports of Starfield and Hi-Fi Rush in future.
• It is expected that Spencer and co. will detail what Xbox exclusives are earmarked for porting to the PS5 and Nintendo Switch at next week’s event.

Earlier this week reports surfaced that Microsoft was working on porting several Xbox exclusive titles to the PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch, with the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Hi-Fi Rush and Starfield all being mentioned as options that the company was mulling over.

While we are yet to see Microsoft officially confirm that it will indeed be porting the aforementioned tiles, head of Xbox Phil Spencer took to his X account a short while ago to tease an event for next week.

“We’re listening and we hear you. 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,” he posted.

At the time of writing no further update has been shared, so we are yet to discover when next week the business update will take place.

We can, however, speculate about what will be shown. On that front people close to the matter have informed The Verge that Microsoft had originally planned to host the business update later in February.

The surfacing of information ahead of time, however, has prompted the company to push forward the event, where Hi-Fi Rush for the PS5 and Nintendo Switch was expected to be announced. Given that titles like Indiana Jones and Starfield have also been bandied about for porting, we could then see a full slate for 2024 revealed at the event.

As for why Microsoft is adopting this strategy remains to be seen, but the general consensus in our office is that although Game Pass is the best subscription-based service available in gaming right now, it does not bring in enough money for the company, especially as players can simply wait until launch date to test out a game they’re interested in instead of paying full price to pre-order it.

If that is indeed the case, then a rethink of how Game Pass works may be on the cards.

Either way, it looks like Microsoft wants to maximise the value of its exclusives given how many big studios it has snapped up in recent years, and porting titles over to other platforms a year or two after an initial release would make sense.

It is already something that PlayStation is doing for PC, although the quality of the port differs greatly between titles.

[Image – Photo by Eugene Chystiakov on Unsplash]