 Microsoft is doing some interesting things when it comes to how they're managing their games moving forward. Now, look, we've been talking about some of this stuff and how there's a couple of rumored games in Hi-Fi Rush and Sea of Thieves that might be coming to Nintendo Switch or Nintendo Switch 2 or maybe both. But what's really interesting is how Microsoft is approaching games moving forward and how this obviously for our purposes impacts Nintendo, but obviously impacts, well, PlayStation as well. Now, there's reasons for this. Many of them probably coming from the fact that Microsoft isn't seeing a lot of growth right now. Their gaming sector isn't seeing subscription growth right now with their Game Pass Ultimate. It's sort of stagnated. Their system sales aren't exactly doing great. So Microsoft is trying to do a sort of different strategy and we're hearing this from the very top of Microsoft now. This is not just something that is willy-nilly tossed away and just fan speculation at this point. No, Microsoft is seriously contemplating doing major things. Let's take a look at how this impacts Nintendo and what was said by the literal CEO of Microsoft. All right, so we're over here at Twisted Voxel with an interesting article saying Microsoft confirms plans to release Xbox first-party games across all platforms, including PlayStation, which they also meant including Nintendo, but, you know, titles. Coming on down, it says Microsoft has confirmed it has plans to release Xbox first-party games across all platforms, including PlayStation and Nintendo consoles. Speaking during Microsoft's annual shareholders meeting, as well as a recent Bloomberg interview, CEO Satya Nadella, I've probably butchered his name, I do apologize for that, confirmed the company's plans to release Xbox first-party games across all platforms, including PlayStation and Nintendo consoles. He stated this in response to a question regarding the health and future of Xbox. In his response, Nadella said that Microsoft is very, very excited about everything that's going on in gaming, especially with the closing of Activision Blizzard King acquisition deal. According to him, the software giant now has the ability to do what it's always set out to do, which is build great games and deliver them to players across all platforms, which includes Xbox and consoles, the PCs, and now even mobile gaming and cloud gaming. During the Bloomberg interview, Nadella specifically mentioned that he wants Microsoft to be a quote unquote good publisher for both PlayStation and Nintendo. He stated that prior to the Activision Blizzard King acquisition, Microsoft was number three or number four, and now post acquisition, he believes that the company has a chance to be a good publisher on Sony Nintendo PCs and Xbox. Additionally, he mentions he wants to do its very best work in gaming. While he referred to it as a core business for Microsoft, he did seem more keen on discussing its connection to AI, stating that it is tremendous synergy between the gaming business and what the company is doing up and down the AI stack. He said that Microsoft is not a conglomerate and the software giant has one platform that it expresses through multiple different addressable markets and gaming is one. Nadella stated that what he thinks about Microsoft is doing at the infrastructure layer or what it will do at the edge, the same set of transistors that first were used for graphics are not being used for AI. He said that it should be possible to connect the dots and see why gaming is going to be more strategic to the company. Earlier, multiple sources had already indicated that Xbox is looking to foray into third-party development with ports of several first-party games rumored to arrive on PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch 2. Today, the Microsoft CEO seemed to have hinted that those rumors are true. And that's really the big thing here is because this is coming from the very top of the company, it's very clear that while I'm not gonna say Xbox is gonna go this traditional, we're all in the third-party bandwagon and just gonna bring all our games everywhere, what I will say is that it definitely seems interesting at least to say the least that they are looking into doing more and more and more things with these other systems. And again, a lot of this is because if they only stuck with strictly the market that Xbox has, it's a fairly small market and that doesn't make sense for the massive IPs they have. Now, we already know Call of Duty is gonna be on everything, like that was the big deal, we're trying to get the deal approved, it's gonna be on many different streaming services, it's gonna be on all of the systems. I mean, look, Nintendo has a 10-year deal locked in, so presumably this year for the next 10, starting in 2024, so now through 30 or 2034, we should be having a Call of Duty on a Nintendo platform that is feature parody with everyone else. So that should be a thing that's happening, but what I find fascinating is it seems to go beyond just Activision Blizzard, there seems to be a general thought process within Microsoft that, hey, we recognize our system sales aren't great, maybe we need to start taking our games and bringing them elsewhere in ways that we can, whether it's through streaming, whether it's Game Pass, or whether it's just straight up native ports, which is very interesting, because when we talk about some of the stuff, like Hi-Fi Rush coming over, that was made, I believe, in part by Tango Works and some other companies within the, these are Microsoft-owned studios, it's a first-party game for them now, and when you talk about Sea of Thieves, look, they've owned Rare a long time. That is very much a first-party thing. Those games coming over were already an indicator, and again, these games haven't been announced yet, but already a very solid indicator that, hey, Microsoft is starting to think beyond the Xbox platform. Now, really the biggest controversy with all of this is being stirred up among the Xbox faithful, the ones that have invested heavily in the Xbox ecosystem and platform, and a lot of their concerns are just their platform being devalued, and or maybe Microsoft someday just not even making a separate Xbox. Now, we all know the roadmap for Xbox and what leaked out there, and that doesn't appear to be the case anytime soon, right? Like there's supposedly a refreshed Xbox Series X coming this year, maybe a new generation system as early as 2026, maybe as late as 2028. So, I mean, Microsoft obviously is still planning to make consoles for the foreseeable future, but this is all more about the 10-year plan, right? The 20-year plan where I'm looking at being 50 years old and maybe there is no Xbox console anymore. There's also some slight concerns from people that just care about the health of the video game industry, and that is making sure that PlayStation in particular has a direct competitor. Now, what I find fascinating about this is no one seems to be concerned about Nintendo having a direct competitor. That's what I find that's interesting in this conversation because right now, Nintendo basically has no competition. We could talk about the mobile handheld PC space. If that's what you think is competition, then Nintendo is crushing that whole market so bad. It's like the Nintendo entertainment system back in the day. There really is no competition. So, when PlayStation not having competition could be really bad for the industry, but then also it's weird when people talk about that because again, I'm a Nintendo YouTuber and I fully recognize right now what is Nintendo's competition? I guess it's PlayStation, but then PlayStation's not portable. I mean, they have the Q thing, but that's not really the same thing, so it's not really a true competitor. That's the interesting part is if Microsoft dips out, PlayStation loses competition, but then Nintendo hasn't had competition for a while and nobody seems to mind. So, I do find it quite fascinating. Obviously, if that does happen, I mean look, realistically the competition is just PlayStation and Nintendo fighting for market share of the video game space and they do directly compete in some ways. They get some of the same games. I totally understand. There is like literally a competitive thing between PlayStation and Nintendo, but man, it will feel kind of weird if Microsoft does dip out of the industry in such a way where they just become more of a third party publisher. Now, Microsoft has always been a game publisher for a very long time. They've been making PC games for a very long time long before they were ever making consoles. So, this isn't even abnormal for them, but I do feel for the Xbox faithful that are really concerned right now and they're kind of just reaching out the Phil Spencer and saying, hey, can we get some affirmation from you? Are we still going to have console exclusive games, system exclusive games, at least Xbox ecosystem exclusive games where it's just PC and Xbox and not PlayStation and Nintendo? Or do we have to look forward to a future where the Xbox Direct today that has Indiana Jones and Avowed and all that stuff is, Hellblade 2 is going to end up on everything, which for Xbox gamers, sort of defeats the purpose of buying an Xbox if you could just get everything on other platforms. So it's going to be quite fascinating. I know there's some people that think we could see announcements as soon as the Xbox Direct today, for those that know, there's Xbox developer Direct that we will be live stream reacting to and some gamers actually think this Xbox developer Direct at the end of the trailers might have more than just an Xbox logo and they're very worried about that for some reason. Now, look, I think games being on more platforms is good for more consumers, but I do understand that concern. For us, obviously, Nintendo fans, hey, look, Microsoft, you want to give us games, give us games. Look, you can give us your latest and greatest games on Nintendo Switch 2 if they run and it makes sense and I will gladly take them. I also want to make sure that you give us some of your old games and you talked about this a bit on the podcast last night. I would love to have Conker's Bad Fur Day coming over to the Nintendo Switch Online service. I would love to see that. The original N64 version, let's get that online multiplayer mode implemented. I've had to see all of those old rare games come back and yeah, I don't know. Like this is just one of those things that I also think if you look to the future of Microsoft, if every game doesn't go multi-platform, well, some games could make sense. There is reported possibilities. There's a new Banjo-Kazooie in the works, it's just a rumor right now, but there is like the thought process, a new Banjo-Kazooie's coming. I don't know, man. What kind of makes sense to get Banjo-Kazooie to launch simultaneously on Nintendo Switch 2? We have the audience that wants to play that kind of game. So it would kind of make sense, but then maybe something like a vowed you would keep to yourself. Although you could argue a vowed could have quite a big audience over on PlayStation. So the same argument for Banjo-Kazooie for Nintendo is the same argument to bring a lot of Microsoft stuff to Sony. So I'm very curious what Microsoft's going to do. I don't think there is a win-win here where they're gonna make Xbox faithful, happy, and also make gamers on other platforms happy. I don't think that's possible. I think there's really just either most things need to be exclusive or most things go multi-platform and you try to balance that line of both. And I think you're just gonna make a lot of people upset. You're gonna get some PlayStation fans thinking they should get more from Xbox, and then you're gonna think Xbox fans thinking they should keep more things just for them. So I don't envy the position that Phil Spencer is gonna have to navigate, but I understand that they're a business and they have to make business decisions. And look, Xbox was struggling to make money. The Xbox side of Microsoft's company wasn't very healthy. And you know what? If they gotta make the hard choices to maybe go kind of mostly third-party, then they're just gonna have to do that someday. For now, though, they're not technically going mostly third-party. Activision Blizzard, King Games might be mostly third-party, but a lot of the stuff that we're seeing today should be Xbox exclusive as far as we're aware. I guess we'll find out because we're gonna be live reacting to the Xbox Direct later today. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. Let me know what you think about this entire situation down below because again, this is coming from the very top. This isn't something that you just ignore and pretend isn't happening. The very top of the company, of this richest company in the world, because Microsoft just passed Apple to become the richest company in the world, you gotta pay attention to what's being said here. You can't just pretend they're not saying they're gonna bring their first-party games to Nintendo Switch 2 and PlayStation 5. They're literally saying it out loud. Gotta pay attention to that. Thank you for tuning in. I'll catch you guys in the next video.