The Redmond-based company has announced that Xbox Game Studios has moved to the 9th console generation, meaning that none of their teams will develop for Xbox One.
It’s about time when you think about it: the Xbox One will turn ten this November (as will the PlayStation 4), but third-party multiplatform developments will continue to appear. However, Microsoft itself is no longer developing for this console, and the Xbox Games Showcase hinted at it, with the company mentioning the Xbox Series and PC for every game. Meanwhile, Sony also often says PlayStation 5, but games have been released for PlayStation 4 (e.g., God of War: Ragnarök).
Matt Booty, head of Xbox Games Studios, confirmed in an interview with Axios that Microsoft has moved to the 9th generation, i.e., the two Xbox Series and that only the maintenance of the live service games already released (e.g., The Elder Scrolls Online) is what concerns the Xbox One. Of course, with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, you can also play from the cloud on this console, so there are the new exclusives; they just don’t run locally. This move also foreshadows the end of the cross-gen era, which has been going on for three years.
And Xbox boss Phil Spencer talked to Polygon about how he thinks Microsoft’s 2024 will be pretty intense: “I don’t have a lot of fear about 2024. 2022 was hard for us. But I think waiting on certain games… Let’s take South of Midnight. As you saw, the game got announced during the Xbox Games Showcase. We had that game ready to announce last year. But we said, let’s keep working on the game. Let’s keep working on the announcement. It’s OK to hold the reveal. Or, let’s take Clockwork Revolution. When I was here at E3 last year, I was at inXile playing that game and not looking at the announcement video but playing that game. And I come back this year down at inXile, playing it again with that team, going through the latest builds. So it gives me confidence because we’re staging the game announcement closer to release. We’ve got hands on the game.
I think now we’re in a position to pay that off. And not just for the next 12 months. When I look forward… there are so many things. We haven’t talked about what’s coming from id Software. We haven’t talked about what’s coming from The Coalition. When are we going to see Perfect Dark again? And when are we going to see Everwild again? We still are working on so many things that we haven’t shown. I don’t like to be confident, but I like to be humbly confident. I feel good about where that portfolio is. I think we’re set up very well,” Spencer said.
Twenty studios are now working for Microsoft, but the first big test will be Starfield from Bethesda Game Studios. Todd Howard’s game could define the near future of Xbox.
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