During an interview with IGN, Xbox’s big boss Phil Spencer briefly addressed the topic of Xbox titles going to other platforms and seemingly confirms that more is to come.
To provide the proper context, here’s how the discussion played out. IGN’s Ryan McCaffrey brings up the topic of DOOM: The Dark Ages which naturally leads into subject of it coming to PlayStation 5. Ryan asks Phil he could walk him through the calculus of buying Zenimax for billions of dollars but not keeping DOOM as an exclusive.
“Well, on DOOM it’s definitely one of those franchises that has a history on so many other devices. I think they have, like, DOOM running on a lawnmower somewhere,” Phil says with a smirk. “But I think it’s a franchise everyone deserves to play.”
Phil goes on to say that the decision to stay on multiple platforms was made by id Software themselves.
“I was in a meeting with Mary and the team a couple of years ago and I asked Marty what he wanted to do and he said he wanted to ship it on all platforms. I said let’s go do that. Like, it as simple as that.”
Phil himself then brings the topic back to Xbox exclusivity and multiplatform releases and seemingly confirms more Xbox games will be coming to other platforms: “…and you are going to see more of our games on more platforms, and we just see that as a benefit to the franchises that we’re building, and we see that from players and the players love to be able to play.”
Xbox, of course, made the decision to bring four of its games (Pentiment, Grounded, Sea of Thieves and Hi-Fi Rush) to Switch and PlayStation. At the time, Phil seemed to see it was just those four games, but as more interviews and quotes appeared, Xbox’s own messaging got muddled.
Of course, Phil’s words could simply be referencing titles that were already expected to come to other platforms. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, for example, is coming to all platforms, while future iterations of series like Fallout and Elder Scrolls are expected to be multiplatform based on prior comments from Xbox about games with a legacy on any given platform staying on that platform.
But based on various reports from numerous insiders, we do know Xbox is seriously considering bringing more and more titles to other platforms. Just days ago Tom Warren of The Verge accurately reported on DOOM: The Dark Ages coming to PS5, while also saying that the likes of Hellblade 2, Starfield and Age of Empires are all being considered for porting over to other platforms. The biggest claim was that a new remaster of Halo: Combat Evolved is also being considered for PlayStation 5.