Xbox Game Pass on PS5? Hints dropped that it could happen – but don’t hold your breath

The head of Xbox at Microsoft, Phil Spencer, desires Xbox video games to be playable on any platform, wherever, even dropping hints that possibly this could be a actuality for rival consoles – or at the very least that he’d be open to exploring that avenue.

This revelation got here as a part of a beefy interview with our sister website GamesRadar by which Spencer talked extra broadly concerning the philosophy of Xbox not being a console, but a gaming platform to be loved throughout a number of gadgets. As a measure of how critical Microsoft is about this, we are able to in fact see the current announcement of the Xbox Game Pass coming to sensible TVs.

GamesRadar grilled Spencer on the prospect of an Xbox app coming to the Nintendo Switch – one thing which has been rumored to be a risk on the boil earlier than – to which he replied: “You know, it’s the right question because people usually ask me about releasing one individual game or another. And what I say is I want the full Xbox experience to be something that we deliver.

“We have no plans to bring it to any other kind of closed platforms right now, mainly because those closed platforms don’t want something like Game Pass. There’s a ton of open platforms out there for us to grow in: the web, PC, and mobile. So all of our focus, frankly, is on those platforms.”

Spencer additional clarifies: “That’s not a slam on anybody else who has a system that works for them. I can see why the disruption of Game Pass is not something that they want right now.” But then he provides: “In the end, when we say we want everybody to be able to play on Xbox, we really mean if we can bring that full experience to a device that players want, we are totally open to those discussions.”

There’s not a lot to go on right here, then, but there’s definitely a touch that it isn’t dominated out that Xbox Game Pass may ultimately find yourself on the Switch, and even the PS5. Is that actually ever more likely to come to fruition, although?

Analysis: Switching issues up – a actuality test

We wouldn’t hold our breath relating to Xbox video games being playable on the Switch or PS5. Don’t get us incorrect, it’s nice to listen to Microsoft persevering with to push ahead with an open philosophy when it involves Xbox Game Pass. But to count on rival consoles to get an Xbox app seems like approach sooner or later stuff – if any ‘stuff’ in any respect.

We’ve heard the deserves of a attainable Microsoft and Nintendo hook-up earlier than, with it making sense by way of giving avid gamers a approach to play Xbox titles on the go, and granting Nintendo an entire raft of video games past its staple franchises. However, it nonetheless looks as if a really distant pipe dream presently – certainly, newer rumors pretty firmly assert that there’s no curiosity from Nintendo in an Xbox Cloud app arriving on Switch – and the PS5 is a fair much less doubtless prospect, in fact.

Still, Spencer’s most up-to-date feedback do characterize a glimmer of hope that possibly, simply possibly, the way forward for video video games could be a much more open enviornment than we are able to presently think about.