Microsoft has pivoted to releasing its first party games on rival consoles from Sony and Nintendo over the past year and intends to continue with its multiplatform launch strategy. The company has sought to de-emphasise its gaming hardware — the Xbox console — and instead focussed on pushing its titles to as many platforms as possible. Xbox chief Phil Spencer had said in November that more first-party games would be launched on PS5 and Nintendo Switch, with “no red lines” in the company's portfolio. In a recent interview, the Microsoft executive doubled down on that claim and suggested Starfield could break Xbox console exclusivity at some point.
Phil Spencer on Starfield's Xbox Exclusivity
In a conversation with independent games journalist Destin Legarie published over the weekend, Spencer refused to rule out the possibility of Starfield releasing on rival platforms like the PS5.
“No,” Spencer responded when asked if he could confirm that Starfield would stay put on Xbox consoles for the time being. “there's no specific game that I would — this kind of goes back to my ‘red line' answer — like there's no reason for me to put a ring fence around any game and say ‘this game will not go to a place where it will find players, where it will have business success for us'.
“What we find is we're able to drive a better business that allows us to invest in great game lineup like you saw (at Xbox Developer Direct). And that's our strategy. Our strategy is to allow our games to be available.
"Game Pass is an important component of playing the games on our platform. But to keep games off of other platforms, that's not a path for us. It doesn't work for us what we're doing now,” Spencer said in the interview snippet posted on X Sunday by Legarie.
The Microsoft Gaming CEO was referring to his response to Bloomberg from November, when he said he wouldn't rule out any games from Microsoft's stable from making the jump to PlayStation or Nintendo consoles. “I do not see sort of red lines in our portfolio that say, ‘thou must not,'” he had said at the time.
Starfield, Bethesda's space RPG that released on Xbox Series S/X and PC in September 2023, has been speculated to arrive on PS5 since early 2024 when Microsoft first announced it would release some of its exclusive games on rival platforms. The game is currently available on current-gen Xbox consoles, PC and Game Pass, but has not yet been released on PS5.
For comparison, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, published by Bethesda and developed by MachineGames, released on Xbox Series S/X and PC in December, but has been confirmed for launch on PS5 in the first half of 2025. Doom: The Dark Ages, another title from Bethesda's stable, is set to release simultaneously on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series S/X on May 15, 2025.
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