We raise a small question about how the whole thing about Xbox exclusives landing on other platforms was handled.
Yesterday Xbox announced the four games from Xbox Game Studios that have become multiplatform: Pentiment, immediately available for PS4, PS5 and Nintendo Switch, Hi-Fi Rush, arriving on PS5 on March 19, 2024, Grounded, available on PS4, PS5 and Nintendo Switch from March 16 April 2024 and Sea of Thieves, releasing on PS5 on April 30, 2024. Well, I have to say, it was another blow to the exclusives system.
But then, thinking about it carefully, the timing raises some doubts. I don't want to make accusations, let's be clear, just raise doubts, what harm can it do? Let's briefly reconstruct the main facts: at the beginning of the month an uncontrolled amount of rumors started circulating, some true, some exaggerated, about the Xbox world and about the arrival of some Xbox Game Studios titles on other platforms. Chaos breaks out in the community. Apparently overwhelmed by the situation, Phil Spencer he takes a few days, then announces an event in which he will clarify the “future of Xbox”. The same takes place on February 15th. During the event we talk about four products that will become multiplatform. Which ones are not revealed, but practically everyone knows them. At the same time there are rumors about others, in particular Starfield and Indiana Jones, but also about the Gears of War and Halo series. The next day it is clarified that these too are not excluded from the group of those that could become multiplatform… we will talk about it again in the future. On February 21st, exactly one week later, the four titles are officially announced, which are already ready.
When was the plan launched?
Now, considering that convert Games like this aren't exactly trivial for a few days, but require months (let's say six could be enough, if they are developed with the Unreal Engine or Unity, but it's not excluded that some may have required more time, particularly on Nintendo Switch which, given the hardware limitations, requires more work), one wonders how long the Xbox studios have been working on it. That is, when the landing plan was launched PS5 and Nintendo Switch? Certainly not in January 2024. Doing a quick calculation, I can assume that the decision was made in the first half of 2023 (after the end of the 2022/2023 fiscal year?). It is also tempting to believe that the whole situation, including the psychodrama of the Xbox influencers, is not exactly spontaneous, so to speak.
If I were a conspiracy theorist I would say that it is a chain of events artfully created to pass the news off in the most painless way possible, first generating a sensational case, and then making it partially subside by minimizing the rumors with official statements. You know when in politics you ask for one hundred to get fifty and pass off the fifty sacrificed as a victory for the opposition, which thus reassures themselves and their electoral base? Well, the principle seems more or less the same. It's a sin to think badly of others, but we often guess, the good Giulio Andreotti would say, that now he can kiss whoever he wants without having to worry about whether he is a mafioso or not. After all, it wouldn't even be strange if Xbox had somehow decided to manage the news by trying to make it as least traumatic as possible for his community.
This is an editorial written by a member of the editorial team and is not necessarily representative of the editorial line of Multiplayer.it.
#Xbox #drama #weeks #artfully #constructed
