Stray has received a new ESRB Rating for Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S.
As you can imagine, the game received a mild rating, E10+. You can read the rating summary below.
“This is an adventure game in which players assume the role of a stray cat trying to escape a mysterious city. From a third-person perspective, players traverse alleyways, rooftops, and rooms while solving puzzles and interacting with robotic inhabitants.
Players sometimes encounter parasitic blobs/mice-like bots that can attack and kill the cat. Players can access a UV light to defeat the mice-like bots, causing them to explode and emit splashes of colored liquid.”
The real news, of course, as reported by Klobrille, is the fact that the rating is for Xbox platforms. Stray was originally released on July 19 of last year for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PC on Steam.
Based on the timing of this rating, it seems that Stray was not a total console exclusive for the PlayStation, but was instead a timed exclusive.
While game companies frequently disclose when their games are timed exclusives for certain platforms, there is no current rule or law being enforced that requires them to disclose such information early.
So, when we were informed that Deathloop was going to stay a timed exclusive to PlayStation because it was paid for by Sony, that disclosure was a necessity because of the circumstances of the game’s development.
We may as well expect that many other PlayStation games, that seemed to have been exclusive for the PlayStation, will come to Xbox in time. In fact, if you can remember any games that were PlayStation exclusive at the same time as Stray, they may be well on their way to coming to Xbox’s platform as well.
As a roundabout consequence of regulator investigations on the Microsoft – Activision deal, we found out that many indies, like Annapurna Interactive, favor Xbox over PlayStation as a platform. While PlayStation 5 currently has the lion’s share of gamers, Game Pass has proven more effective in platforming indies and their games, to compete better vs bigger titles than they are able to under PlayStation.
So, unless the independent studio in question is already partly owned by Sony or is in a similar situation, we can reasonably expect that previous PlayStation exclusives like Stray will eventually come to Xbox. Or perhaps more accurately, these indies are coming to Game Pass, as it seems to be the reasonable way to get those games promoted and actually making money with Microsoft.