Microsoft has increasingly moved toward a fully multiplatform release plan for its games, but that strategy has not been perfectly consistent. Yesterday's Xbox Developer Direct offered a pretty good illustration, with Fable coming to PS5 on day one alongside the Xbox version, while the release of Forza Horizon 6 will be staggered across the two platforms. What gives?
"I take a pretty simple view on this," Xbox Game Studios head Craig Duncan says in an exclusive interview with GamesRadar+. "We want our games to reach the most players that we can." Duncan was previously studio head at Rare, and oversaw Sea of Thieves as it moved to Steam and then PS5, and with each successive port, he says, "we saw the community around the game grow."
"For our game makers," Duncan explains, "if you're on the Fable team you just want as many people who love Fable and appreciate the great work that the team's doing. That's always our goal. It's rarely more complicated than that. It's like, how can we get this game to as many players as we can?"
While Xbox has made clear that this is the overall strategy, Duncan readily admits that "sometimes we are inconsistent," as we're seeing with Forza Horizon 6, which will launch on PS5 some time after the Xbox and PC versions arrive in May. "You see some games in one place, some games in multiple places," he says. "Just know that we're going to work on that, and we're going to try and be more consistent with what we do."
Still, Duncan doesn't want to fully commit to day-one launches across Xbox and PlayStation, as he feels it's more important to "maintain optionality" in order to make sure every player, regardless of platform, gets the best possible experience. That includes making sure that each game takes full advantage of "whatever features and nuances that the platform has."
"If we're only in a position to release a game on a platform and not have it show up really well? Then I think we wouldn't do that," Duncan says. "I think we would have a conversation internally and go, 'Hey, unless we can do it really well and do the right thing by those players, then…' and that's when you get into conversations of, well, maybe we can ship it afterwards. Because teams are only a set size. We only have a certain amount of… ultimately, it all comes down to resource. Not everything is limitless. So we just want to do the best job, by each platform, by each game."
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