 Xbox games are coming to Nintendo Switch, or at least four previously exclusive Xbox titles will be coming to Nintendo and to PlayStation console platforms. It's the big talk of the recent Nintendo Partner Direct, and indeed rumours and rumblings had been heard for quite a while now that Xbox might be dramatically shaking up their publishing strategy. There had been some particularly outlandish speculation, some had been expecting Microsoft to cancel making Xbox consoles entirely, or move Xbox Game Pass on to Nintendo Switch and Sony PlayStation, but these things don't seem to have panned out and it's fairly understandable why not, because Microsoft has a lot of money and Xbox is something that they really care about making, whether or not they're as profitable as certain other consoles. Regardless, the move to publish previous Xbox exclusives on other consoles is a big step, and it's one that Microsoft is taking for several reasons. Obviously, the big answer is money, and so if you are typing the comment, because money, don't worry, I've already got there, I've got you covered. But the question remains, why is Microsoft moving to publish on Nintendo Switch and on Sony PlayStation? Because there is more than just the initial big chunk of money that they'll get from selling these games on more platforms. Now full disclosure, I am filming this video before the Nintendo Partner Direct, which means that you know something that I don't, and that is what for games Microsoft is actually publishing on Nintendo Switch and on PlayStation. I'm fairly confident that Hi-Fi rushes on that list because everybody has been talking about it. I'm also hoping, and have heard some rumblings that it might be this, but I'm hoping for Pentamon, because that is one of my absolute favourite games of all time. And indeed throughout this video you're going to be seeing a lot of Pentamon footage, whether or not Pentamon is coming to Nintendo Switch, just because it's one of the ones that was likely before the announcement was actually made, and because I love it and I've got loads of footage of this game, and what else am I going to do with that footage? I really do need to make that Pentamon video one day, but in the meantime, have a look at it, because why not? It's absolutely gorgeous. Why then is Microsoft publishing on Nintendo Switch and on Sony PlayStation? Because there is more to this than just the big chunk of money they'll get from selling these games on another platform. Head of Xbox Phil Spencer would like you to take this as an egalitarian offering, his gift to the world, an attempt to rid the world of the nefarious console exclusive. And yes, you could take it that way, but there's more going on here. There is a murkier reason why Microsoft actually needs to publish games on other platforms. Hi-Fi Rush is something of a Trojan horse. It's coming to you, yes, with a lot of flash and sparkle, and it's nice to have it, but there's something else hidden within it. Something that is potentially very anti-consumer, rather than being of any benefit to you whatsoever. With this in mind, let's look at three different reasons why Xbox games are coming to Nintendo. Do you see what I did with the colours? Do you see? Yeah. Chapter one, the lonely exclusives. Or fill her up. Head of Xbox Phil Spencer does not like console exclusives. Speaking about the concept of an exclusive in general, he said, I do have a fundamental belief that over the next five or ten years, exclusive games, games that are exclusive to one piece of hardware, are going to be a smaller and smaller part of the game industry. And that's not some great insight, because if you look at the last ten years and what the biggest games are today, it's a natural place. Whether it's one console in PC, multiple consoles, mobile console in PC, you see big games landing on multiple platforms. This is a drum that Phil Spencer has been banging for quite some time now, and while yes he is trying to frame it as being the natural direction of the industry, if you look at another quote, you can tell that this is a very personal mission for him. This quote is specifically referring to console exclusive DLC, but I think it can be applied to console exclusive games in general. He said, quote, People always knock me on this. I've been on record. I don't love the idea or practice of us paying so other platforms can't play or use a certain gun in a game or do a certain level. I know I say that and Xbox history, DLC exclusivity, Windows with Call of Duty, I understand the fingers are pointing right back to Xbox. I can only be who I am. It's not the best PR answer, but I don't like that. So we can definitely see here that there are some people within Microsoft and within Xbox that are pushing for exclusive games and then Phil Spencer is pushing against that. And to a certain degree, he's trying to make this feel like a sensible, smart business move, but this does come from a place of him personally not loving an exclusive, and that being the case, more power to him because I think a lot of consumers would agree. The benefit of an exclusive typically is not that it sells more games, but that it sells hardware. And indeed, I have to say that last generation, certainly when I have the choice between a PlayStation four or an Xbox, what was that one called Xbox one? I went with the PlayStation four because there were more games on PS4 that I actually wanted to play, for example, Persona. That was probably the big one. That was maybe the game that sold me on a PlayStation four, where I wasn't that fussed about an Xbox. Now, of course, it's easier for me to play a Persona game on a variety of different platforms. In fact, if anything, it's easier for me to play it on Xbox because it's just there on Xbox Game Pass for some bizarre reason. And that is wonderful from a consumer perspective, but it does mean that I don't have quite as much impetus to buy a PlayStation five. Either way, these four new games coming to Nintendo Switch and to PlayStation are not the first of Xbox's attempts to try publishing on other consoles. First, we had Cuphead, and we had games like Ori and The Will of the Wisps, Ori and the Blind Forest. These games have kind of set the groundwork for more Xbox games coming to other platforms. And it's something that Xbox has been working towards for quite a while because to a certain degree, if you take Phil Spencer's words at face value, you might end up believing that Xbox isn't actually trying to compete too hard with Sony anyway, although there may be a very good reason why Phil Spencer wants to discourage that particular comparison. You do get the sense with these warring factions within Xbox that perhaps the company is still trying to just dip their toes into the water of third-party publishing without actually fully committing, hence why there's only four games at the start of this new initiative. Spencer has said of the new initiative, quote, Just four games, not a change to our kind of fundamental exclusive strategy. We're making these decisions for some specific reasons. We make every decision, really, with the long-term health of Xbox in mind. And long-term health of Xbox means a growing platform, our games performing, building the best platform for creators, reaching as many players as we can. And therein lies the rub because there's been some problems with the Xbox in terms of reaching a wider market audience. Things have kind of stalled for Xbox specifically and indeed for game pass from a wider perspective. Chapter two, a numbers game. Or nobody's buying Xboxes. Yeah, let's be blunt, the Xbox ain't selling well. Now, let's be fair, Xbox has never had the biggest share of the console market sales pie. The only time it came even close was with the Xbox 360, which sold just shy of the number of PlayStation 3s worldwide. But generally speaking, Xbox is not the biggest thing in gaming. This generation, Xbox really isn't stacking up particularly well against its competitors in the console sphere. Numbers are hazy because Microsoft doesn't often like to commit. But as things stand at the moment, as we understand it, there have been 21 million Xbox series consoles sold, that's both series X and series S. There have been 50 million PlayStation 5s, which means there are over twice as many PlayStation 5s as there are Xbox series consoles. Meanwhile, off in a bubble all by itself, is Nintendo, who has managed to sell 140 million Nintendo Switches, give or take. But then the lifetime of that console doesn't really sync up with the other two anyway, because the Wii U underperformed them, so Nintendo had to rush out the Switch, and so it's kind of out of sync with the other consoles. And Nintendo just kind of does their own thing anyway, like you can't really compare Apple's Dwarrenches here. Regardless, the main takeaway here, there are 50 million PlayStation, there are 20 million Xboxes give or take. Xbox is not winning the console war this time around, and with that comes a much smaller potential audience for any Xbox game. Consoles of course are only half the battle for Xbox, because there's also the lucrative PC market, which all things considered is probably doing a bit better than the console home market for Xbox, but still, things are sluggish compared to where Microsoft would like them to be. The numbers again are murky, Microsoft doesn't like to commit by actually telling us what's going on, but as far as we're aware, at the moment there are around 34 million subscribers to Xbox Game Pass, which you'll note is significantly more than the number of Xbox consoles in the wild. The rest of the subscriber base is made up of PC users. 34 million is nice, but it is nowhere near where Microsoft wanted this platform to be. Previous to this, the last time that we got a concrete update on the number of subscribers for Game Pass was back in January of 2022 when there were only 25 million subscribers, which means that in the past two years-ish, the platform has really only gained around 10 million subscribers, which is not ideal if you are trying to grow this into like the biggest thing in gaming. Indeed, in 2022 Axios reported that Microsoft had been aiming for a 73% growth rate for Xbox Game Pass, and instead had only managed a 28% growth rate, which means that things are a lot more sluggish than Xbox was hoping for. In October of 2022, Phil Spencer was very candid in discussing this, saying, quote, we're seeing incredible growth on PC. On console, we've seen growth slow down, mainly because at some point you've reached everybody on console but wants to subscribe. So there's a bit of a ceiling to the growth of Xbox Game Pass and the number of units that Microsoft can sell within the console sphere, because they just don't have the same numbers as other consoles on the market. I completely believe this because personal anecdotal evidence I have not bothered to buy an Xbox console. I do dip my toes into Xbox Game Pass on a kind of month-by-month basis depending on what new games are out and whether or not I feel like playing anything. I do so mostly on my phone. I've got one of these, what is this? This is a game, sir, one of these controllers where it clips into your phone and then, whoop, it turns your phone into a games console of sorts. It's got a little Xbox button, so you know it's legit, that's how I play Xbox games, and it works very well on the X-Cloud. I'm genuinely surprised how well playing games through streaming online actually works with Xbox, because it's way better on Xbox than any time I've tried to stream a game on Nintendo Switch, but that's just personal anecdotal evidence. I've been playing Xbox games on Sony for years, but then that's because I got content to buying a Sony phone. I thought it'd be useful for remote play. It is not. People will occasionally call us Nintendo fanboys in the comments on this channel, and I do find that funny as I talked to you on my Sony camera holding my Sony phone. I mean that said, as mentioned, I don't have a PS5, I don't have an Xbox series, I do have the current Nintendo hardware, but given that 120 million other people also have that, I don't think that makes me a fanboy. Alright, you're overheating. That's not helpful. Stop overheating. Another personal example, when Breton Stripes wanted to try out Tetris Effect, we first tried it on her PC, using Xbox Game Pass for PC, and then when she really liked it, we ended up purchasing it for PlayStation, because there's no brand loyalty here. Certainly from those two examples, you can see how for our family at least, the Xbox console itself is the weak link for Microsoft. They have a much larger audience if they look at their PC install base than they do for just console sales, and so as such, it does make sense to try and take some of these games which are otherwise locked onto Xbox consoles and put them onto other consoles as well, and thereby reach a larger audience and earn a little more cash. Besides, Phil Spencer is adamant that Nintendo and Sony are not Microsoft's main competitors within the gaming sphere, although he does have ulterior motives for suggesting this. I keep coming back to this quote from 2020 in which Phil Spencer said, When you talk about Nintendo and Sony, we have a ton of respect for them, but we see Amazon and Google as the main competitors going forward. That's not to disrespect Nintendo and Sony, but the traditional gaming companies are somewhat out of position. Ah, the benefit of hindsight. In retrospect, I would not necessarily categorize Nintendo and Sony as being out of position when we're having this conversation about Microsoft, but that's beside the point. If anything, I would say that Game Pass' main competitor is Apple Arcade, a service which I didn't even know I had access to until Sonic Dream Team came out and then I discovered that, oh, that family plan that my dad is paying for because he really loves Apple products, that gets me a bunch of games as well. Huh, who knew? Like, no one asked my dad to make a family plan. He just announced one day in the Family WhatsApp, hey, I've got a family plan for Apple now, who wants it? And I was like, yeah, alright. So, it saves us money on Spotify, I suppose. Regardless, Microsoft's big plan for growing Xbox by just buying a bunch of different gaming companies has hit something of a snag because they still can't get these games in front of more consumers. People are just not going out to buy an Xbox specifically for, say, Starfield, because why would you do that? So, while PC is doing alright, Microsoft needs a different plan for consoles. And indeed, there has been talk from Microsoft that suggested that they would absolutely love to have Xbox Game Pass on PlayStation and on Nintendo Switch as well. It's just that neither Sony nor Nintendo want this, because it would be absolutely devastating for them. Like, seriously, as much as Microsoft might love Xbox Game Pass on Nintendo Switch, Nintendo would hate that because it would have people playing Microsoft games instead of Nintendo games. For one thing, that's a huge loss of revenue, because if people are playing Xbox Game Pass, they're not buying Nintendo games, but from a wider perspective, Nintendo is very aware of just how potent their intellectual property is, and just how much of their business is driven by the fact that people recognise Mario. That's the whole reason why the Mario movie did well last year, is because people recognised Mario, and if people are using their Nintendo consoles to play Microsoft games, then they're not reinforcing that brand appeal, that familiarity, that, oh hey, I know that thing, I'll go and spend money in the cinema to watch it jump around. Now, publishing individual games on the Nintendo Switch does make a lot more sense for Nintendo, particularly at a time where they're clearly saving a lot of their big hitters for whatever follows on from the Switch. So, they kind of want extra games, and here's Microsoft coming along with a bunch of games that they can just have for free, or indeed for profit for Nintendo. But Nintendo and Sony are likely going to be very careful about accepting what seems like a big helping hand from Microsoft, because the reason why Microsoft absolutely has to publish these games on other platforms, and the reason why they've chosen these specific four games to start with, rather than some of their bigger, heavier hitters, is entirely down to the negotiations surrounding their purchase of more gaming companies, and the increasingly large monopoly that they are aiming to achieve. Chapter three, the oncoming Blizzard, or Brrr, it's cold in here. Right, I don't feel like I need to go through the entire back and forth of the Microsoft Activision Blizzard purchase, so I'm just going to do it in the very, very basic way here. Essentially, Microsoft said, I want to purchase Activision Blizzard, to which several antitrust or anti-monopoly groups around the world said, eh, hang on, you can't do that, that would make you too big. To which Microsoft said, but I really want a bi-activision Blizzard. To which the EU in particular said, you absolutely can't do that because that would not be fair on Sony consumers, because you'd be taking things like Call of Duty away from them, and nobody even wants an Xbox anyway, this is really bad for consumers. To which Microsoft said, ah, well, I'm going to publish a bunch of different games on all different consoles, I'm going to give Call of Duty to Nintendo. To which Nintendo said, eh, why am I in this conversation? I want nothing to do with this. To which Microsoft said, hush, now the grown-ups are talking. And essentially, that's where we ended up. So the weird ultimate outcome of Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard is that they have to publish some games on other consoles. And again, here they've chosen four games that are not Call of Duty, they are some fairly, you know, they're good games, they're solid games, but they're not like the biggest ones on Microsoft's upcoming docket. And while certainly I get the sense that Phil Spencer would like to play around with some of these exclusives a little bit more, certain other factors within Xbox and Microsoft would like to keep the big ones exclusive, because they're just holding out that hope that people might buy an Xbox, or sign up to Game Pass to play them on their phone instead. And essentially, it's not hard for Microsoft to keep up the pretense that they're not actually in competition with Sony or with Nintendo, and that they can just share and share alike. Because, yeah, frankly, they've been heading in this direction for a while, with their focus on Xbox Game Pass, and with their small attempts at publishing other games like Cuphead and like the Ori games on other consoles already. It's funny in retrospect to look at that quote from 2020 in which Phil Spencer claimed that Xbox's main competitor was Google Stadia because we all know how that panned out. But at the same time, it's clear that the groundwork has been laid for quite a while now to kind of position Xbox not as a competitor to PlayStation and to Nintendo, but simply another service provider that works alongside them. Because if you can get that kind of idea across, it makes these antitrust issues a lot less of a problem for companies that want to continue to just gobble up every studio they can get their hands on. To be clear, it is very bad for consumers if one or two big companies own basically every gaming studio, because it pushes everyone else out of the market. Now, one of the nice things about gaming, as opposed to, say, the film industry or publishing industry, other different types of media, is that in the game industry there is space for indies. But that space gets smaller and smaller the more that these large companies end up kind of coagulating into one big homogeneous blob. That was an absolutely disgusting metaphor, but I stand by it. To that end, Microsoft is definitely hoping for a situation where they become the biggest name in gaming basically through attrition, but they can't outright say that, and they need to kind of disguise the fact that if given the chance they absolutely would buy Nintendo in a heartbeat, because they've already tried. There are definitely people within Nintendo who are concerned about the prospect of a hostile takeover, that one very big large company might force them to sell Nintendo whether or not anybody at Nintendo actually wants to sell the company, and apparently there are measures in place to try and prevent this should it occur. According to Nintendo president Shintaro Furukawa, quote, in the case that we face a hostile takeover that would damage the value of the company or the common interest of the company's shareholders, we do have systems in place, both within the company and in connection with outside experts for such an occurrence, to take all legal and appropriate steps against it even if we have not proactively put preventative measures in place. Essentially the takeaway from that is that Nintendo is prepared in case a large company naming no names attempts to force them to sell up, which is good news for consumers. Either way though, we are definitely going to see some more kind of consolidation of the large powers within gaming in the next few years. This is going to become an increasing issue and it's something that consumers and gamers in general should be aware of and should be very worried about because it doesn't necessarily always end well when one or two big companies manage to control everything within an industry. It simply means less choice, higher prices and worse quality of product, which is not good on any front if you're actually playing games. This then is why Microsoft is moving to publish four previous Xbox exclusive games on Nintendo Switch and PlayStation hardware. It's because Phil Spencer doesn't like exclusives, it's because Xbox console sales are not where they should be, and it's because Microsoft has pinky promise that they will do this. The moral of the story? No, you shouldn't necessarily always look a gift horse in the mouth, but sometimes you'll want to know what's in the horse's mouth. Thank you for watching.