It looks like we shouldn’t be too hasty about Microsoft bringing all their games to PlayStation.
Jez Corden shared this tidbit in a conversation on Twitter:
“in fact, last i heard, there’s currently no playstation port in development. but that doesn’t mean it wont ever happen.”
Jez was in a conversation about Starfield, and he claimed earlier that Starfield fans would have something to be excited about later this year. He explained that he was referring to Shattered Space, the game’s first DLC scheduled for Fall 2024.
There was so much FUD over the last few months about Microsoft becoming a full-on 3rd party publisher, meaning all of their games would be coming to PlayStation, and potentially the Switch 2, depending on that platform’s capability.
And all that FUD stemmed from when the company revealed at the start of this year that they would experiment with releasing four games on the Switch and PlayStation 5. Those games turned out to be Grounded, Sea of Thieves, Pentiment, and Hi-Fi Rush.
Of these four titles, Sea of Thieves turned out to be a huge success on the PlayStation 5, but we don’t really know if Microsoft saw enough success to want to expand the amount of games they would be bringing to other consoles.
Now, notoriously, Microsoft Gaming’s Zenimax made the call to close Hi-Fi Rush studio Tango Gameworks. It should be clear that this decision was not based on the sales of the game, though there’s credible speculation that the performance of the studio’s library in general, including bigger budget projects like Ghostwire: Tokyo and The Evil Within.
This created a huge negative atmosphere around the Xbox brand, especially for Xbox console owners. If they aren’t sure that the studios Microsoft owned will be around to keep making games, or that they will continue to have exclusives, what is the point of having an Xbox? And many fans have already been talking like they expect big games like Starfield, Halo, and Forza coming to PlayStation.
So, Xbox fans are in this weird place where they don’t really know what to expect. One does have to consider, though, that Microsoft is still very much set to have a better 2024 than PlayStation.
It has been misleading, because so many of Microsoft’s games weren’t ready for the first half of 2024. But now there’s a giant batch of games that could be coming out too close to each other, at the same time when PlayStation 5 owners don’t have any first party games to look forward to.
Jez himself reported that Microsoft higher-ups was allegedly forcing Xbox to make more multiplatform releases. But if they aren’t actually making a Starfield port right now, this may be more of a potential fear, than something that’s already happening.
If you were expecting a more definite position on whether Microsoft will or will not go completely third party, that really isn’t to be found here. But now really isn’t a smart time to switch consoles if you were on Team Xbox, or PlayStation for that matter. Maybe it would be better to just focus on the games you already have.
