Speculation has been circling for a bit now regarding Microsoft's plans to take some of its titles and give them a new lease of life on Nintendo and Sony's consoles, however today that new cycle has erupted with a slew of updates.
If we are to believe all of the updates floating out in the online discourse, the broad upshot seems to be that Microsoft will soon announce that many of its past titles will be ported to rival consoles. In addition to this at least some recent and new releases will also make the jump with the timing between the Xbox launch and rival consoles being as little as a handful of months. On the further edges of speculation is that Microsoft may take a step back from focusing on their own hardware and permit some third party hardware makers to release their own Xbox consoles.
And so now forums are alight with hopes of Halo on PlayStation 5, Banjo Kazooie 4 on Nintendo Switch 2 and Game Pass open to all.
Say that this is indeed the case - By going beyond just giving some legacy titles like Sea of Thieves some extra life by porting them once sales have dried up, Microsoft opens up a pandora's box for themselves that can never be closed again. They would be very close to, perhaps irreversably on a path to, becoming the largest third party games maker in the industry.
The shift in position would also arguably not actually make a case for Game Pass on PS5 and Switch 2, the opposite in fact, more likely placing anything up to a death sentence on the service because it would never be allowed in its current form on their platforms and it also harms the profitability of Xbox's titles by hoovering away the early adopter sales.
But also, despite the slow rate of sales leaning us that way currently anyway, it would cement the console industry into a two horse race should Xbox consoles no longer be required by MS. Neither of those two consoles being too directly in competition with each other either, Nintendo's red branding being now renowned for monopolising the home to handheld experience whilst Sony's blue branding the poster child for the traditional model and then free to take monopoly of that side of the coin uncontested.
From the current direction this seems to be heading in, given it seems Microsofts hand increasing appears likely to be forced to respond to these stories:
Do you believe that the Xbox Series S/X will be the final Xbox hardware generation?
And in follow up to that:
-How do you feel the console market would emerge from this market change?
-Would it be a good move for the market?
-Would it affect your hardware focus next generation?
If we are to believe all of the updates floating out in the online discourse, the broad upshot seems to be that Microsoft will soon announce that many of its past titles will be ported to rival consoles. In addition to this at least some recent and new releases will also make the jump with the timing between the Xbox launch and rival consoles being as little as a handful of months. On the further edges of speculation is that Microsoft may take a step back from focusing on their own hardware and permit some third party hardware makers to release their own Xbox consoles.
And so now forums are alight with hopes of Halo on PlayStation 5, Banjo Kazooie 4 on Nintendo Switch 2 and Game Pass open to all.
Say that this is indeed the case - By going beyond just giving some legacy titles like Sea of Thieves some extra life by porting them once sales have dried up, Microsoft opens up a pandora's box for themselves that can never be closed again. They would be very close to, perhaps irreversably on a path to, becoming the largest third party games maker in the industry.
The shift in position would also arguably not actually make a case for Game Pass on PS5 and Switch 2, the opposite in fact, more likely placing anything up to a death sentence on the service because it would never be allowed in its current form on their platforms and it also harms the profitability of Xbox's titles by hoovering away the early adopter sales.
But also, despite the slow rate of sales leaning us that way currently anyway, it would cement the console industry into a two horse race should Xbox consoles no longer be required by MS. Neither of those two consoles being too directly in competition with each other either, Nintendo's red branding being now renowned for monopolising the home to handheld experience whilst Sony's blue branding the poster child for the traditional model and then free to take monopoly of that side of the coin uncontested.
From the current direction this seems to be heading in, given it seems Microsofts hand increasing appears likely to be forced to respond to these stories:
Do you believe that the Xbox Series S/X will be the final Xbox hardware generation?
And in follow up to that:
-How do you feel the console market would emerge from this market change?
-Would it be a good move for the market?
-Would it affect your hardware focus next generation?
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