New statements by industry insiders and Xbox Game Studios paint a fascinating picture of the two giant platform holders’ strategy going into next-gen. While Microsoft is working on supporting the Xbox One for years with future titles, Sony is reportedly keeping it traditional by creating PlayStation 5 exclusives right of the gate.
The next generation of console gaming is right at the doorsteps, with both Microsoft and Sony preparing to unleash their new consoles later this year in the Holiday season. Both companies already talked and even showed a lot about their new systems but new details suggest that this time, the overall company strategy is going to become the biggest differentiator between the two.
In an interview with MCV UK, Xbox Games Studio head Matt Booty revealed that all of the Xbox’s first-party games are and will be developed with the last-gen Xbox One in mind in terms of compatibility. This means, that games two years from now by the large ensemble of developers under the Xbox Games Studio umbrella will both be playable on the future Xbox as well as the Xbox One.
Supporting the large existing user base is a nice decision but one inadvertently thinks about next-gen titles being held back by the fact that they have to work on the much less powerful Xbox One consoles. After all, it has been seven years since the console came out. That’s an eternity in the tech realm.
Compared to that, Sony is supposedly following a much more traditional strategy with the PlayStation 5. During a podcast (around the 29:00 mark), Kotaku’s Jason Schreier stated that Sony will be releasing PS5-only games starting with the launch of the new system later this year. He didn’t talk about any of the games in particular but teased more details in the near future.
With Microsoft fully embracing multiplatform game releases in the recent past, it looks like that trend will follow into the future. Will it affect prospect Xbox users negatively remains to be seen.
