Microsoft has been a competitor in the “console wars” since 2001 with the Xbox, and has had to have good exclusive titles to sell their consoles. However, in 2016, Microsoft announced the Xbox Play Anywhere program, which had certain Xbox games also released on PCs on the same day. Microsoft ended up seeing large-scale success from this, and the Xbox Play Anywhere program likely led to their decision in 2024 to release certain titles on Playstation and Nintendo systems.

   On February 21 of this year, Microsoft announced that four major titles were coming to Playstation 5 and Nintendo Switch, with those games being “Sea Of Thieves”, “Hi-Fi Rush”, “Grounded”, and “Pentiment”. All of this after weeks of speculation and a large amount of fans fearing that Microsoft was killing the Xbox brand entirely, which was further fueled by a wrongly worded post by Gamestop calling Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass service “Microsoft Game Pass.” However, it was simply a typo, and one that has happened before on numerous developers’ websites.

   “Sea Of Thieves” is a multiplayer adventure game where players command a pirate crew across the seas, including encounters with other pirate gangs and large sea creatures. “Hi-Fi Rush” is an action game with a heavy emphasis on music-oriented combat and a silly story, as well as a beautiful cell shaded art style. “Grounded’ is a survival Player Versus Environment (PvE) game where players have to survive in a backyard after being shrunk down, and the game can be played in either in single or multiplayer modes. “Pentiment” is a murder mystery game where the player has to investigate a series of unsolved crimes in their town. All of these games are releasing on PlayStation 5, with only “Grounded” and “Pentiment” launching on the Nintendo Switch.