Xbox boss Phil Spencer on why Indiana Jones is coming to PS5
Microsoft confirmed this week that its tentpole, triple-A exclusive, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, would in fact be a timed exclusive on Xbox. The action-adventure title will initially launch on Xbox Series S/X, Game Pass, and PC in December, before coming to PlayStation 5 early next year, Bethesda announced at Gamescom on Tuesday. Following the confirmation, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer spoke about the company’s intentions and future direction when it comes to first-party games launching on rival platforms.
Coming to Xbox on YouTube channel Joined by Xbox President Sarah Bond, Spencer answered a question about the launch of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle on PS5, saying that Xbox is focused on growing its games.
“If we look at the PlayStation announcement last spring, we launched four games — two on Switch, four on PlayStation — and we said we would learn,” Spencer said. “We said we would look, I think at the showcase I would have said we would do more, based on what we learned,” he added, referring to Microsoft’s announcement earlier this year about launching four of its exclusive games on PlayStation and Nintendo Switch.
While Spencer didn’t directly link the decision to release Xbox games on a competing platform to business reasons, the Xbox executive did say the gaming division had a business to run and was accountable to its parent company, Microsoft.
“What I see when I look at it is our franchises are getting stronger, our Xbox console player counts are as high as they’ve ever been this year. So I look at it and I say, ‘Okay, our player counts are up on the console platform, our franchises are as strong as they’ve ever been … and we’re running a business,'” Spencer said.
“That’s certainly true within Microsoft: the bar is set high for us in terms of the performance that we have to deliver to the business, because we get a level of support from the business that is simply astonishing in what we can do.
“I look at this: How can we make our games as strong as possible? Our platform continues to grow, whether it’s on console, on PC, in the cloud. I think it’s just a strategy that works for us,” Spencer said.
The Xbox chief didn’t elaborate on the decision to bring a major first-party release like Indiana Jones to PS5, nor did he clarify whether more big Xbox exclusives would be coming to other platforms in the future. But industry insiders believe that it’s likely that more first-party Microsoft titles will go multi-platform. Another Bethesda title, Doom: The Dark Ages, announced at the Xbox Games Showcase in June, is confirmed for PS5, along with Xbox Series S/X and PC.
However, Spencer did admit that there was “pressure” on the video game industry as a whole and spoke of the sector’s stagnant growth, suggesting that “more change” was on the way.
“The last thing I’ll probably say is I think there’s a lot of pressure on the industry right now. It’s been growing for a long time and now people are looking for ways to grow,” he said. “And I think that we as fans and players of games just have to anticipate more change in the way that some of the traditional ways that games have been built and distributed, that’s going to change for all of us.
“But the end result has to be better games that more people can play. If we’re not focusing on that, I think we’re focusing on the wrong things,” Spencer said.
He concluded by saying that the health of Xbox and its games remains the “most important thing” for the company.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, developed by MachineGames and published by Bethesda, is scheduled to launch on PC, Xbox Series S/X, and Game Pass on December 9. The action-adventure title will launch on PS5 in spring 2025. After Bethesda confirmed on Tuesday that the game would be coming to PlayStation, game director Jerk Gustafsson said, “We want this adventure to be something that everyone can enjoy.”
