Real Talk: Does Xbox need to go third-party at this point?

Sitting and watching last night’s State of Play was wild, not because we finally got a glimpse of Wolverine or because of the numerous excellent new titles that were shown. No. It was the announcement of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 for PS5 and PSVR2, which was the most shocking moment of the entire night.

This isn’t the first Xbox title to make its way to PlayStation 5 in recent years; we have seen many other titles that were once Xbox exclusives now appear on PS5 and even Switch. Still, the idea of seeing a game with Microsoft’s name on it featuring a PS5 logo was one of the more interesting moments to come out of the whole presentation.

On the one hand, Microsoft will be pleased to see the excitement surrounding the game on PS5, as evident from the comments section on YouTube’s PS5 trailer. Most are even calling it the definitive way to play on console, thanks to the VR support. But you also have to wonder, is this the point where Xbox should pivot away from making consoles altogether, when it is already pushing the Xbox brand onto any device, from TVs to smartphones?

Xbox recently announced its second price hike for all Xbox systems this year, prompting some retailers to give up on the consoles altogether and sell them at massive discounts to clear their stock. And with most of its first-party lineup now on other systems, the idea that you need to own an Xbox to play these games is long gone.

So real talk. Destructoid faithful. Should Xbox give up making new consoles and being a first-party studio and pivot to being one of the biggest, if not the biggest, third-party studios of all time? Or should it continue to release its games as timed exclusives on its own platforms before slowly releasing them on other devices?

There are arguments for both, but with everything that has been going on with the Xbox brand these past few years and the direction the company appears to be going, whether through Microsoft’s influence or not, where do you think Xbox is going, and what do you think will happen?

For me. It’s hard to say. I feel like the death knell for Xbox would be seeing Halo appear on Switch 2 and PS5. If Xbox’s biggest first-console mascot is no longer tied to the Xbox brand, then what is sacred to the platform anymore? Once you start that process and put it into people’s minds that they can play your games anywhere, even if they have to wait a little longer to do so, the reason to buy an Xbox and justify the purchase really does get thrown out the window.

But what do you think? Let me know in the comments below!