Microsoft is dropping a special edition of the Official Xbox Podcast, which if all the chatter and rumors are true is going to make for a huge Microsoft Xbox announcement today. While it is a podcast drop rather than an official Xbox press conference, it could well be one of the biggest Xbox events in quite some time.
The Xbox event today is dropping on YouTube and all good podcast platforms, and will hear Xbox boss Phil Spencer, Xbox president Sarah Bond Xbox president, and head of Xbox Game Studios Matt Booty sharing "updates on the Xbox business".
That's rumored to include the future of Xbox exclusives, a focus on cross-platform strategy, and more.
What time is the Xbox Podcast?
The Official Xbox Podcast will drop at the following times:
- 12PM PT
- 3PM ET
- 8PM GMT
- 9PM CET
How to watch the Xbox Podcast
You'll be able to catch the Xbox announcement today on youtube.com/xbox, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
In the few hours until the event, let's take a look at what's been said, and what rumors are circulating shall we?
Let's get caught up with what all this is about, shall we? Earlier this month, multiple reports suggested that Microsoft was looking into a multiplatform future for some of its biggest games. Those included potential PS5 releases for Starfield, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and more.
Obviously, that would mark the biggest shift in Xbox's strategy since the console's inception, and it's thrown fans into something of a frenzy.
That frenzy led to Xbox announcing an update on "the future of Xbox" for this week. In a message on Twitter, console chief Phil Spencer told concerned fans that "we're listening and we hear you," and promised "a business update event [...] where we look forward to sharing more details with you about our vision for the future."
That's tonight's event, if that wasn't clear - Spencer will be sitting down with fellow execs Matt Booty and Sarah Bond to share that vision, in roughly three hours from now as I'm writing this.
Even with that attempt at a clarification, however, rumors and general uncertainty have abounded. At around the same time as Spencer was announcing his update, Halo developer 343 Industries was busy suggesting (via a job advert) that future games in the series would be "for all players, on all platforms". While that seems to be to be more likely to mean all Xbox platforms than all platforms, period, it does seem to be exactly the kind of slightly unclear statement that has us wondering what we're likely to see this afternoon.
Since then, Phil Spencer and co have clearly been trying to rein in the messaging around the event. One report suggests that Spencer told Xbox colleagues that Microsoft was not done making consoles amid rumors to the contrary - the thinking being that if Microsoft wasn't going to be a console-exclusive publisher anymore, it wouldn't need to make consoles anymore.
More recently, Sarah Bond is also said to have told colleagues that "every screen is an Xbox" amid sentiments of a desire to be the leading cross-platform gaming company.
So what does that actually mean?
According to one recent report, it means that Hi-Fi Rush and Pentiment will be two of the first first-party Xbox titles to make the jump to other consoles. Sea of Thieves might follow later this year, with questions marks over the likes of Starfield and other new releases. There's no word in that report about Halo, or the likes of Gears of War, but the suggestion is that those games that do make it to new platforms will be decided, broadly, on a case-by-case basis.
For my two cents, if that report proves correct, it could be a smart move from Microsoft. Hi-Fi Rush and Pentiment are both well-received, smaller games that supply a niche very effectively, but are unlikely to appeal to a broader audience. They also stem from some of Xbox's smaller studios - Tango Gameworks and Obsidian, respectively.
If these games are the vanguard of a new strategy for Xbox, they're likely to be pretty well-received - picked up by a smallish contingent of relatively passionate Switch or PlayStation fans, all while rocking the boat of passionate Xbox fans as little as possible. Similarly, Sea of Thieves is now more than half a decade old, and is another example of the kind of game that doesn't have mainstream appeal. A move to new consoles is likely to help keep the game alive, keep developer Rare's bottom line healthy, and not remove a reason for prospective players of games like Avowed or Everwild to buy a Microsoft system in the first place.
If you don't have any faith in what I have to tell you, then you can ask Ubisoft CEO, Yves Guillemot. During his company's recent investor briefing, he was asked what he made of rumors of a multiplatform future for Xbox.
"They are going to decide what is best for them," he said. "What you have to look at is that Activision Blizzard used to be multiplatform, so it would have an impact, but not a huge impact on the industry."
Presumably, Guillemot's suggestion is that Microsoft, having recently bought up a slew of studios across the industry, including Activision-Blizzard, could be about to take some of those studios back to their status quo. Longer-running studios, like Halo's 343 Industries, Gears of War's The Coalition, Forza's Turn 10 Studios, or indeed Rare, might stay firmly under the Xbox umbrella, but the likes of Obsidian, Ninja Theory, and Playground Games might not.
Alternatively, turn to The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 studio CD Projekt Red. In a recent tweet, their CEO, Michał Nowakowski, said that their games would remain proudly multiplatform. That's probably good news for The Witcher 4 fans, but it was never really in doubt - until such a time that CDPR gets acquired (a fate quite unlikely for the (eventual) creator of two of the best RPGs of the past decade), I'd imagine its games will show up everywhere the studio can put them. Hey, if The Witcher 3 can fit onto the Nintendo Switch, anything is possible.
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