Over the past couple of weeks, and particularly ramping up in early February 2024, we’ve seen increasing numbers of reports suggesting that Xbox might be making a LOT more of their first party titles available on competing console hardware in the coming months.
Rumours back in January initially suggested that Sea of Thieves and Hi-Fi Rush might be coming to PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch in the immediate future, a rumour which many are taking more seriously as a result of a recent Hi-Fi Rush update containing t-shirt files seemingly pointing to such an announcement being imminent.
Adding further fuel to the fire, rumours this past weekend suggested that Starfield, Hellblade 2, and Indiana Jones are allegedly being considered for the third party port treatment.
Now, none of this is official at the time of writing this script, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Hi-Fi Rush has been announced for Switch by the time that next week’s episode is edited and published, that’s how imminent I think a lot of this coming to light is going to be. It seems pretty likely that, to some degree, Xbox games are going to start appearing on other hardware, perhaps delayed a little from their initial launch.
A lot of Xbox owners are, perhaps understandably, jumping to some conclusions in the absence of official messaging from the console publisher. I’ve seen some people assuming for example that every single Xbox game from now on is going to become multiplatform, that Xbox titles are only ever going to be timed exclusives from now on, and even suggestions that this signals Xbox entirely dropping out of the console business in the immediate future.
Do I think that’s likely? Not really, at least in the short term.
I think it’s much more likely that they’re strategically porting some titles at present for specific reasons, such as to get an invested playerbase who might buy an Xbox console down the line in order to play a future exclusive sequel, or they might be doing this to bolster sales on specific titles that underperformed expectations while they were exclusive.
I think Xbox as a company likes having a box that is guaranteed to natively offline run their GamePass library at an affordable price below that of a gaming PC, and I don’t see them abandoning that pillar of their business model for a while yet.
Rumours are strong of upcoming future hardware from Xbox, I don’t think they’re abandoning the model any time soon.
I think that the right way to look at Xbox’s rumoured direction is to look at PlayStation, and how they’ve recently been bringing their titles to PC a few years after their console releases. Both companies want their console to be the place where you buy their games if you want to play them day one, but they also want to double dip and bring in extra sales down the line from players whose interest in those games isn’t high enough to invest in dedicated hardware.
It’s an acknowledgement of differing audience demands, not necessarilly a sign of departure from the console space.
That said, all of the discussion I’ve been seeing online regarding the idea of Xbox potentially, maybe, hypothetically dropping out of the console manufacturing business has made me reconsider something I’ve not thought about in quite a long time.
If we do one day end up seeing a one console future for the games industry, would that benefit or harm accessibility?
Now, obviously there is no one correct answer to this question. There’s a million different little ways which a hypothetical one console future could work, and each would have different pros and cons. This is a thought exercise only, one meant to explore possible positives and negatives which could arise, in various models of a more condensed game industry. None of this is certain, but it’s interesting to explore the possibilities in abstract.
I won’t be able to cover even a fraction of the possible ways this could shake out, but I hope that this acts as an interesting springboard for discussion. I’d love to know what possibilities jump to mind for all of you, as I could honestly talk about these hypotheticals for days.
So, let’s start with a hypothetical games industry where Xbox drops out of console manufacturing, leaving PlayStation and Nintendo alone making consoles. Fundamentally, little would change about the shape of the industry for consumers, you’d still have one powerful home console and one less powerful handheld hybrid device, just a little less consumer choice about that top end hardware for home consoles. We could picture this also with PlayStation being the ones dropping out and Xbox staying, but we’ll stick to the former scenario here just as it’s the one currently being discussed online as a hypothetical possibility.
The first question that arises for me, would PlayStation be willing to support the Xbox Adaptive Controller as a third party device for PlayStation 5? My personal suspicion is no, PlayStation seems to want the Access Controller to be a one size all fits solution for PS5 owners accessibility needs. They’re pretty rigid in their view of accessibility support, and seem to be pretty inflexible. They don’t to me seem to be interested in accepting that other hardware besides their own might be more useful for some players.
If in this hypothetical the Xbox Adaptive Controller wasn’t supported on PS5, it would undoubtedly be a negative for the industry, removing a highly loved accessibility tool from use on major big budget console games. We would likely see Xbox Adaptive Controller users shifting to PC to continue being able to use the device that works best for them, rather than moving to PS5 and having to switch to a controller that might not be as strong of a fit for them.
But, hypothetically, if they did support the use of the Xbox Adaptive Controller on PS5, that would be a potential step forward for the industry, allowing a greater variety of accessible input devices to be used on one singular home console which receives the vast majority of new releases. As unlikely as i think it is, a single major powerful home console supporting both the Xbox Adaptive Controller and the PlayStation Access Controller and both systems libraries of games would noticeably improve accessibility for many.
Now, with regards to Nintendo in this hypothetical, I could actually see them moving to officially support the Xbox Adaptive Controller in this hypothetical scenario. Nintendo doesn’t have their own first party accessibility controller on Switch, relying on the Hori Flex from a third party manufacturer. I could definitely see a world in which Nintendo welcomed supporting the Xbox Adaptive Controller to try and get a nice PR win, or potentially reaching out to Xbox themselves to design an official adaptive controller solution for whatever Switch successor is probably released by that time. Xbox’s hardware team has a lot of expertise, and Nintendo might just jump on the chance to use that team to improve their position accessibility wise in the industry for hardware.
Additionally, you have to consider software level ways in which Xbox is currently outdoing PlayStation and Nintendo, and whether those innovations would be incorporated or discarded from the industry.
For example, while both Xbox and PlayStation support a version of Co-Pilot mode, where players can use multiple controllers as a single user to create custom control setups, Xbox allows each Co-Pilot Mode controller to be independently remapped and reoriented, which PlayStation currently doesn’t support. If PlayStation in this hypothetical didn’t improve their offerings to match those on Xbox as Xbox stepped away from the industry, that would be an improved version of Co-Pilot Mode support that would just be gone.
Unless the remaining platforms left behind committed to learning from and integrating their lost competitors improvements and advancements, those aspects of accessibility in the industry would undoubtedly have backslid as a result.
Next, let’s think about a true one console future, where only one of the three major platforms survives and becomes the basis for the rest of the industry.
The most obvious negative impact a one console future would present is a lack of competition. Right now, for better or worse, all three major console makers have taken very different approaches to hardware based accessibility. Xbox features no motion controls at all and supports the Xbox Adaptive Controller, the PS5 has motion, touchpad support, and the Access Controller, and the Switch has split handed motion controllers and the Hori Flex. Each company has gone in differing directions, meaning consumers have choice about which setup they find most accessible. Without competition, whichever console remained would likely set in stone standards which would become norms for the industry.
We would still likely see innovation and competition on the software side of accessibility, but if for example the only console on the market supported motion controls, any accessibility controller made would either need to find a way to emulate motion, or would fail to be fully be supported across all games.
Right now, for example, Xbox is the only console maker whose accessibility controller works for every game being released on their system. If PlayStation or Nintendo were the last system standing, their accessibility controllers would either not work for every game, or would need to evolve to meet that space in the industry.
Additionally, innovation in the physical hardware accessibility space would likely slow down, as a result of having fewer companies innovating at one time, and as such fewer examples of new innovations to copy from and integrate.
Now, to be clear, this wouldn’t necessarily be all doom and gloom. Assuming the one remaining console manufacturer was willing to allow third party peripherals manufactured by their old competition, one obvious benefit would be that all major video games could be available on a single platform, meaning reduced costs involved for disabled players in accessing hardware that plays all new releases, and not needing to buy multiple unique accessibility controllers – whichever one works for them could be used across their whole library.
And, in theory, a single console manufacturer would have the ability to, if so inclined, shape accessibility efforts in the industry via setting certification standards that could shape publishing plans. If, for example, a single console manufacturer mandated that accessibility store tag information be submitted alongside any game, that would basically become an industry standard overnight. There would be a lot of potential power there, assuming that we trust whichever company comes out on top to make responsible use of that position.
If, for example, Nintendo ended up the only console manufacturer in the industry tomorrow, I would expect a dramatic backslide in overall industry accessibility, as the main industry player would be a company which has shown little interest in pushing the accessibility space forward for disabled players, or even in keeping up with innovations and standards being set by their biggest competition.
If Xbox were the only one left standing, I honestly think we’d have the best chance at seeing a more open industry future, where lessons from the consoles that fell away had a good chance of being picked up and adapted.
If PlayStation were the only player left in the industry, I think we’d see a big push forward in game settings accessibility, but some rigidity stifling potential advancements. I think they’d really struggle to innovate in a scenario where they were the only player in the game, without competition to have their efforts marked against.
In a one console future, innovation would only be as strong as whoever was left standing. Companies with differing areas of accessibility expertise would no longer be pushing each other forward toward innovation in that same way, and the eventual standardising of expected accessibility standards would be harder to reach.
Lastly, I believe that if we did see a major consolidation of the home console game industry, we would likely see a huge amount of focus in the accessibility space shifting toward PC. An open platform which isn’t a walled garden would become a very appealing space very quickly, and one where I suspect we’d see much of the focus move in terms of hardware based accessibility.
I could, for example, see a push for the industry to embrace something like a home console equivalent of the Steam Deck. A PC with set known specs that sits in your living room, supports third party controllers and peripherals, and is about as close to a console as you can get without being a closed ecosystem.
Yes, I think a one console future would almost necessitate Valve trying to return to making the Steam Box a thing again, and I honestly kind of think they could at this point. The Steam Deck has been a good proof of concept.
That all being said, I think the era in which a one console future might have been a possibility has honestly been and gone. There’s too much demand for both a top end powerhouse home console and a portable gaming machine in the games industry right now, and as such I don’t see a one console condensing of the industry happening, at least until portable gaming hardware reaches a performance threshold indistinguishable from home console gaming. Even if Nintendo and Xbox for example dropped out of the games industry tomorrow, I think devices like the Steam Deck existing would lead to a rapid filling of the void with a new portable home console hybrid. Something like the Lenovo Legion Go would likely quickly rise to bring the industry back into a degree of competition with itself.
I don’t think a one console future for the games industry is likely, either in the long or short term. As much as non-interactive media like movies have condensed such that there’s only really one format standard at a time available for them, video games have proven time and time again to be a field where there’s always a company wanting to try something a little different with how we interact with the games we play.
The industry’s size may wax and wane, with companies joining and exiting the battle for the hardware space, but fundamentally I think the current industry size is going to remain fairly stable at least for the foreseeable future.
While there are potential benefits to condensing the size of the industry, in terms of prices involved in accessing software and potentially making competitors’ accessibility hardware available on one single platform, I think generally the potential negatives outweigh any positives I see.
A reduction in competition would slow down and stagnate innovation and growth in gaming accessibility. As the gaming accessibility space is still so young, anything slowing down that race for innovation would in my eyes ultimately be a detriment.
But, as I said at the start, there’s a million different hypothetical ways a one console future for the games industry could shake out. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this in the comments, because this kind of big picture hypothetical thinking is some of my favourite stuff to discuss in the games industry.