There have been many “walls” broken down within the gaming industry recently, and not all of it was because of “goodwill” and wanting to “spread the gaming joy.” Instead, companies like Microsoft, Sony and Square Enix were all hit with heavy financial issues recently, which led to layoffs, studios closing, and multiple “reshufflings” of both personnel and busy strategies. That included all three companies looking to lean away from the exclusivity style that they have done in the past and embrace a more multiplatform venture. That applies to the upcoming LEGO Horizon Adventures, which will be on PlayStation, the Nintendo Switch, and PC.
Now, Sony has done multiple PC releases in the past, and this has helped them gain more acclaim and sales for its titles, but putting a game like LEGO Horizon Adventures on Switch was surprising, as the series hasn’t been out of a PlayStation console, save for PC, in the past. That means that Nintendo fans would only be getting this “side version” of the main games instead of the originals by Guerrilla Games. The dev team noted that they felt this was a good chance to expand the reach of the saga, and that’s not an unfair way of looking at things.
However, you might have noted that the Xbox line of systems wasn’t mentioned in this game’s release, and gamers have found that odd. Why does one rival console get the game but not another?
The answer, if you can call it that, came from GameFile. They spoke with Guerrilla Games narrative director James Windeler, who had a curious “comment” to give.
“Right now, we’re just very much focused on pushing this hardware to its limits and making this game look as amazing as it can possibly be on this hardware,” he noted, then added that they don’t have “anything to announce about Xbox right now.”
In other words, they don’t have a comment on it.
One could read into this in various ways, but let’s look at the simplest one, shall we? Sony and Microsoft have been going at it for a long time. Sony even took Microsoft to court to try and stop the merger with Activision Blizzard. Furthermore, Phil Spencer fired some shots at Sony over the last couple of years, and even recent weeks, and they likely haven’t forgotten that.
While Nintendo is doing far better than Sony right now, they’re competing on “different planes.” As such, they might not see this port to the Switch as anything harmful, whereas giving it to Xbox might be “aiding the competition.”
