Xbox Business Podcast: Multi-platform strategy, future plans, and more

The highly-anticipated Xbox Business Podcast is here, offering fans a glimpse into the green team's future. Given the influx of speculation and rumors leading up to this event, fans expected Microsoft's Xbox brand to undergo a shift. That could involve things as minor as teases about what's on the horizon to major alterations in the company, like the dismantling of this hardware segment entirely.

Since many are curious about what happened during the event and what to expect from Xbox going forward, here's a rundown of everything discussed during the Xbox Business Podcast.

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Everything discussed at the Xbox Business Podcast

Several topics were discussed, from upcoming ports and vision for the future to next-generation plans and more. Let's start with the most exciting highlight involving games. In a nutshell, Microsoft is not backing away from bringing the Xbox experience to other platforms. In light of that, four specific Xbox titles will be going multi-platform soon.

The criteria are that these will be about a year old games, are community-driven, and belong to IPs that the publisher wants to grow. Two of the titles going multi-platform are live-service, and the other two will be smaller single-player offerings.

Disappointingly, none of them were officially named during the Xbox Business Podcast. But anyone keeping up with the Xbox catalog can easily guess most of them.

The live-service titles are likely to be Sea of Thieves from Rareware and Obsidian Entertainment's Grounded. One of the single-player games, meanwhile, is likely the previously rumored Hi-Fi Rush, the cathartic rhythm action game from The Evil Within developer, Tango Gameworks. The last title is a bit tougher to guess, it could be Pentiment — another underrated modern Obsidian offering.

Since all these games are already on the PC, fans expect them to arrive on the remaining two current-gen platforms, the PS5 and Nintendo Switch.

But what about the company's future plans? Thankfully, their vision remains unwavering. While Xbox is not yet ready to bring its entire catalog to competitor platforms, it wishes to continue bolstering its ranks with new users, especially from other demographics like PlayStation and Nintendo.

This desire will be aided by a strong push with the Xbox Game Pass, crossplay/cross-platform functionality for the Xbox and PC, and an attractive selection of in-development games.

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Is Xbox abandoning making hardware?

Hardware will remain a key focus with cloud to supplement it (Image via Microsoft)

This brings us to perhaps the elephant in the room that many fans wanted to see get addressed at the Xbox Business Podcast: Is this company finally going to stop making console hardware and focus solely on being a games publisher, just like SEGA? For the foreseeable future at least, that is not an option for Xbox. After all, they wish to provide their creators with powerful tech to make what they want.

So, fans who were worried about the console front being axed altogether can breathe a sigh of relief. Seated officials at the Xbox Business Podcast made direct mention of hardware being a key component of their growth strategy. Moreover, the company seems to have "exciting" hardware news planned for Holiday 2024.

No, it is not a successor console — that is something to be unveiled for a future next-gen roadmap. However, essentially, Xbox has confirmed that its next-gen console is in the works. Game preservation was also touched upon, as backward compatibility has been a major selling point for Xbox.

Alongside cloud gaming, this will continue to be a feature because the company wants to allow players freedom of choice. Finally, the publisher has 10 games lined up for 2024, with more under production, so fans have much to look forward to.