Xbox’s highly anticipated ‘business update’ coming Thursday, in podcast form

polygon.com:

Microsoft’s highly anticipated update on the state of the Xbox business — and whether Xbox exclusives are going multiplatform — will be revealed on Thursday, Feb. 15. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer, Xbox president Sarah Bond, and head of Xbox Game Studios Matt Booty promise to share updates on the Xbox business in the form of a podcast, according to a post on X from the official Xbox account.

Thursday’s “special edition of the Official Xbox Podcast” will available to watch on YouTube “or wherever you listen to your podcasts,” Microsoft said. The podcast will go live on Thursday at 3 p.m. EST/12 p.m. PST.

The discussion between Spencer, Bond, and Booty will hopefully address roiling rumors and reports that various Xbox-exclusive games, including titles like Sea of Thieves, Hi-Fi Rush, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and Starfield, might be making their way to PlayStation and Nintendo consoles. Last week, Spencer addressed the flurry of rumors in a roundabout way, promising concrete details about what’s next for the Xbox brand and platform.

“We’re listening and we hear you,” Spencer said on X. “We’ve been planning a business update event for next week, where we look forward to sharing more details with you about our vision for the future of Xbox. Stay tuned.”

The future of Xbox will reportedly still have a hardware component. According to a report from the Updater newsletter, Spencer recently told Microsoft employees at a town hall meeting that there are no plans to stop making Xbox consoles, part of a strategy that involves “multiple kinds of devices.”

Microsoft is already in the multiplatform game business, thanks to acquired properties like Minecraft, Call of Duty, Diablo, and Overwatch. But if franchises typically associated as Xbox-only, like Halo, Gears of War, Forza, and Fable, are going to PlayStation and Nintendo consoles, it would signal a radical departure from Xbox’s past. We’ll know more on Thursday.