Xbox boss Phil Spencer has said there’s nothing stopping any of the company’s games coming to Nintendo or PlayStation platforms in the future.
“I do not see sort of red lines in our portfolio that say ‘thou must not,'” Spencer told Bloomberg, adding that it was still too early to discuss Microsoft’s plans for the next Halo – now being built in the cross-platform-friendly Unreal Engine.
Xbox launched Pentiment, Hi-Fi Rush, Grounded and Sea of Thieves across a mixture of PlayStation and Nintendo Switch consoles earlier this year to some success, with more than 1m sales reported for Rare’s popular piratical live-service game. Microsoft will follow this with a PlayStation launch for Xbox’s biggest Christmas blockbuster, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, early next year. The expectation is that many other Xbox games will follow.
In a wide-ranging interview, Spencer also discussed his long-held desire to launch some kind of Xbox handheld. Microsoft is currently working on prototypes and considering the market, Spencer said, though the launch of an official Xbox handheld is still a few years out. (So, no Xbox handheld before Switch 2.)
Spencer also said Xbox still “definitely want to be in the market” to acquire other companies, following Microsoft’s record-setting $68.7bn buyout of Activision Blizzard. That said, deals of similar size were currently unlikely due to the still-ongoing process of merging in Activision teams.
The Xbox chief said he was still looking for deals that added “geographic diversity”, such as teams in Asia, despite it walking away from Hi-Fi Rush studio Tango Gameworks earlier this year.
“The Xbox business has never been more healthy,” Spencer concluded, when asked how he felt about 2025 after a year punctuated by repeated layoffs. “The business is performing right now, and I think that means a more healthy future for hardware and the games we build.”