After over a week of swirling rumours that have sent the Xbox community into meltdown over the future of the console and its exclusive games, the company is ready to clear the air on what’s to come. The Xbox Twitter account posted today that it will be releasing a special edition of the Official Xbox Podcast on Thursday, February 15 at 3 p.m. ET (Editor’s note: That’s Friday, February 16 at 7:00 AM AEDT for the Aussies. We’ll write a breakout on when you can catch it around ANZ later this morning — David). The episode will be hosted by Phil Spencer (CEO of Microsoft Gaming), Sarah Bond (President of Xbox), and Matt Booty (Head of Xbox Game Studios). The three will share “updates on the Xbox business.”
This comes after Phil Spencer said last week that the company would be holding some kind of business update event that would illuminate “our vision for the future of Xbox.” Many assumed that this would come in the form of a live show of some sort, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. One would expect good news to be shared as widely as possible, and a podcast does not instil that kind of confidence in this being “good” news. Considering, however, that the response to rumours that Xbox-exclusive games may be coming to rival platforms has been less than positive from a large portion of the Xbox fanbase, it’s not hard to understand why the company may not want to pull out all the stops for this, whatever the news may be.
It’s worth noting that the airdate for the podcast is a few hours after the usual time Nintendo Directs air, on a day when a Nintendo Direct is rumoured to be occurring. If one is indeed announced, it will lend credence to the rumour that Xbox games (such as the previously rumoured Hi-Fi Rush) will be released on the Switch. If the Nintendo Direct does reveal that Hi-Fi Rush or other games previously exclusive to Microsoft’s platform are coming to the Switch, then Xbox will want to clear the air on how this ties into the company’s plans going forward. Currently, there are a number of Xbox games rumoured to be coming to rival platforms, including big tentpole titles on the horizon like Senua’s Saga and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. You can check out every rumoured game coming to other consoles in our roundup.
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