South of Midnight Should Be The Next Participant in a New Xbox Trend

Xbox has had a pretty busy year so far. The Xbox Developer Direct firmly cemented itself as the first major event of the gaming industry’s year, Obsidian’s long-awaited fantasy RPG Avowed released back in February, and Compulsion Games’ South of Midnight launched just over a week ago.

Though it’s received a bit of a mixed critical reception due to its repetitive combat and safe platforming and exploration mechanics, South of Midnight has still earned itself a loyal fan-base. It’s very rare to see a game explore American Deep South folklore, and it’s even rarer to see a game put it front and center of the experience. South of Midnight may not be a perfect fairy tale, but it’s one that Xbox should think about sharing with its competition.

South of Midnight: Huggin Molly’s Story Tackles Some Serious Subject Matter

South of Midnight is home to a handful of terrifying bosses, but there’s much more than meets the eye to the seemingly monstrous Huggin Molly.

Xbox’s New Strategy Seems to be Paying Off

Just over a year ago, Xbox announced a bold, somewhat controversial strategy. Rather than keep its first-party titles exclusive, Microsoft announced that it would be porting some of its Xbox Game Studios titles to PlayStation and Nintendo Switch. The first to embark on this bold quest was Obsidian’s Pentiment, which hit PS4, PS5, and Nintendo Switch in February 2024.

Pentiment was quickly joined by fellow Obsidian title Grounded and Rare’s multiplayer pirate adventure Sea of Thieves. Though Pentiment isn’t believed to have made much of a dent, Grounded was estimated to have pulled in over 80% more players on PlayStation than Obsidian’s 16th century adventure game. Sea of Thieves was a much bigger success, selling one million copies on PlayStation in just four months and being the platform’s most downloaded game in North America May 2024.

Though it took a little while to gain traction, it seems Xbox’s multi-platform strategy has finally hit its stride, and Microsoft is making the most of it this year. Last year’s Indiana Jones and the Great Circle has just come to PS5, and the award-winning Forza Horizon 5 is set to join it on April 29. There have even been rumors that Xbox could be setting its sights on the Nintendo Switch 2, with the likes of Halo: The Master Chief Collection leaked to appear on the upcoming handheld.

Based on the number of ports still on their way to other platforms, it seems as though Xbox is happy with the results of its relatively new strategy, and South of Midnight should be the next game that benefits from it. South of Midnight is far from a perfect game, but its core story, character relationships, and gorgeous world are certainly worth sharing with a wider audience.

On Steam, South of Midnight has a peak player-count of 1,438 (according to SteamDB), and that peak was reached on April 13. At the time of writing, South of Midnight has just 415 active players on Steam. While Xbox hasn’t released official sales numbers for South of Midnight on consoles, it seems likely that anyone with an Xbox or PC who wanted to try the game already has, especially given that it’s available on Xbox Game Pass. If that theory is correct, then Microsoft would stand to gain more from South of Midnight by releasing it on other consoles than by keeping it exclusive.