GRcade

Xbox’s Promise to Bring More Games to More Players Around the World

Today, on a special edition of the Official Xbox Podcast, we shared an update on plans to continue to bring more games to more people around the world, with the exciting news that the first Activision Blizzard game on Xbox Game Pass will be Diablo IV, beginning March 28.

Phil Spencer, Sarah Bond, and Matt Booty also shared the vision on game exclusivity, the future of Xbox hardware, and the overall Xbox promise. There’s a lot to talk about, so we encourage you to watch the full episode here:



With the combined creativity across Team Xbox, players can expect an incredible 2024 with the likes of Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Avowed, Ara: History Untold, Towerborne and more coming your way, alongside continued updates for our blockbuster franchises Call of Duty, Minecraft, Forza, The Elder Scrolls Online and Microsoft Flight Simulator.

There will be even more to play as we begin to fulfill our commitment to offer Activision and Blizzard games with Game Pass, both new releases and classic games from its legendary catalog. We’re happy to share that Diablo IV will be available to play by the 34 million Game Pass subscribers on both PC and Xbox consoles beginning March 28! This is only the start of Xbox players being able to enjoy Activision and Blizzard games on Game Pass – we look forward to sharing more soon.

Our combined studio teams already ship some of the biggest franchises and critically-acclaimed adventures across multiple platforms: Minecraft, Call of Duty, Overwatch, Diablo, The Elder Scrolls Online, and more have built communities across consoles, PC, and mobile. Likewise, Xbox Game Studios and Bethesda have brought dozens of games to Steam alongside Xbox consoles on launch day; the teams at Xbox have extensive experience supporting multiple platforms, while continuing to invest heavily in our studios, our consoles and services.

Indeed, our games are reaching more players than ever; across Activision, Bethesda, Blizzard, King, and Xbox Game Studios, we reach hundreds of millions of players across console, PC, and mobile.

To ensure long-term success for both Xbox and the industry as a whole, we must continue to evolve. Today we announced that we will expand the communities we reach: we are currently in the process of bringing four Xbox games to other platforms. These are titles which have been available to Xbox players for at least a year, including hidden gems that deserve to be experienced more widely, and live service games whose communities will benefit from welcoming even more players. We will share more details on these titles soon.

By bringing these games to more players, we not only expand the reach and impact of those titles, but this will allow us to invest in either future versions of these games, or elsewhere in our first-party portfolio. There is no fundamental change to our approach on exclusivity.

Likewise, our commitment to game preservation is unwavering. Xbox players should have confidence in building your digital library in the Xbox ecosystem. We will continue to reward that with the most robust, player-friendly experiences, including backwards compatibility, cross-play, cross-save progression, convenient cloud gaming, and more. Xbox consoles will continue to provide a flagship experience for players; it’s where you get the best value and convenience, it’s where Game Pass provides unprecedented access to an ever-evolving library of games. To be clear: Game Pass will continue to be only available on Xbox platforms.

This is what it means to be part of Xbox:

The biggest games in the world will be on Xbox.  
Our games will come to Game Pass day one.
A robust and innovative multi-year hardware roadmap
Compatibility with your library is a priority, inclusive of cross-play, cross-save, and robust cloud features.
Xbox will continue to help game creators find the biggest audience possible.

Whether you’ve been with us since 2001, recently joined Game Pass to enjoy games like Starfield or Palworld, or are looking forward to the next season of Call of Duty, the creative teams at Xbox are stronger together – no matter where you play. Xbox will be around for decades to come – we hope you’ll join us on this journey.

There's some exciting stuff coming out in hardware that we're going to share this holiday. And we're also invested in the next generation roadmap. And what we're really focused on there is delivering the largest technical leap you will have ever seen in a hardware generation, which makes it better for players and better for creators and the visions that they're building.

Captain Kinopio wrote:They turned a cool announcement into genuinely one of the most awful things I've ever watched.

Matt Booty is the only one that didn't come across as an absolute ghoul.

Horrible.

Captain Kinopio wrote:My god

If you take into account we bought one of the biggest publishers in the industry. We're one of the biggest publishers on Switch and PlayStation.

What a strawberry floating bullshit thing to say

There is some serious strawberry floating nonsense being spouted here.

Monkey Man wrote:

There's some exciting stuff coming out in hardware that we're going to share this holiday. And we're also invested in the next generation roadmap. And what we're really focused on there is delivering the largest technical leap you will have ever seen in a hardware generation, which makes it better for players and better for creators and the visions that they're building.

ITSMILNER wrote:This was so blown out of proportion 4 games coming to other platforms, Xbox will still make hardware and games still going into GP day one.

And this 2024, the year coming up, we've got more than 10 major releases coming up-- great stuff. Hellblade 2, they've got Diablo expansion, they've got Avowed, Ara, the Indiana Jones game, and there's more in development, which I think we're going to be able to share more about at our June showcase coming up pretty soon.

Speaking to The Verge, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer went a step further, teasing that the Xbox hardware teams are thinking about building different kinds of hardware. "I'm very proud of the work that the hardware team is doing, not only for this year, but also into the future," says Spencer. "[We're] really thinking about creating hardware that sells to gamers because of the unique aspects of the hardware. It's kind of an unleashing of the creative capability of our hardware team that I'm really excited about."

There have been persistent rumors of an Xbox handheld, and Spencer has been liking posts on X that mention the possibility of this hardware. "I'm a big fan of handhelds," says Spencer. "I'm a big fan, but nothing to announce." He does admit that there's still a lot of work to do on the Windows side for handheld gaming PCs. "One of the weak points in the experience on a ROG or the Lenovo [Legion Go] is Windows," says Spencer. "How Windows works on controller input only on that kind of DPI, on a smaller eight- or seven-inch screen. That's a real design point that our platform team is working with Windows to make sure that the experience is even better."

Microsoft announces the release of four of its own titles to PS/Switch. It is also clear that Xbox hardware will continue.

The four titles affected are ``Hi-Fi Rush,'' ``Pentiment,'' ``Sea of ​​Thieves,'' and ``Grounded.'' Also announced plans for new consoles this holiday season.

andythevillan wrote:No news as to how they intend to reverse the fact that xbox console sales have collapsed.