A new report claims Xbox boss Phil Spencer told employees that Microsoft has no plans to exit the console business. This comes during a large online firestorm around Xbox and its future following rumors that some big exclusives might land on PlayStation 5.
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Over the February 3 weekend, reports and rumors began to circulate that Xbox was planning (or at least talking about) bringing some of its big exclusives to PlayStation. This included Bethesda’s latest RPG Starfield and third-person shooter franchise Gears of War. “Passionate” Xbox fans initially dismissed the reports, but as more folks corroborated the info, even the Xbox insiders began to believe. This led to a lot of panic and yelling online from diehard Xbox fans, console warriors, and influencers. Since then, a general sense of “What is happening at Xbox?” has formed online. Even a fairly innocuous GameStop promo image set off a whole bunch of people. And now, it seems that the (unlikely) scenario that Xbox would stop making consoles has been ruled out by the head exec of the brand.
A recent story from reporter Shannon Liao alleges Spencer held an internal town hall meeting with Xbox employees on February 6, following the weekend reports of Xbox porting games to PS5. In that meeting, he reportedly said the company has no plans to stop making consoles and that Xboxes would continue to be a part of the company’s strategy alongside other devices.
Kotaku has reached out to Xbox.
Interestingly, Liao also reported on X/Twitter that Spencer did not confirm nor deny rumors that Starfield would go to other consoles, even though this meeting took place after those reports cropped up.
Later this week, we will likely find out if any of these rumors and reports of Xbox exclusives coming to other platforms are true. On February 5, the day before the reported town hall meeting, Spencer announced that a “business update event” about the future of Xbox was coming soon and that he would be sharing more details then. Until that time, the Xbox faithful will just have to hold on a little bit longer.
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