Xbox Series X Breaks Launch Tradition; Details About First-Party Exclusives

The upcoming next-generation gaming console from Microsoft, the Xbox Series X, is poised to break the company’s traditional launch based on the recent statements of Microsoft Studios Head Matt Booty. Xbox Series X will not launch with exclusive games available only on the new gaming hardware. Instead, Microsoft seems to be using the Xbox Play Anywhere and will fully support backwards compatibility a year or two following the gaming console's launch.

Over the next year, two years, all of Microsoft games, will play up and down that family of devices, reveals Booty in a recent interview with the UK gaming site MCV. Microsft would want to make sure that if gamers invest in Xbox, they would feel that Microsoft is committed to them with content and that they made a good investment, according to the Microsoft Studios head. It seems to imply that there will be a time at which new first-party Xbox titles developed for the Xbox Series X will not run on the standard Xbox One, but that would seem to be a way out post-launch.

Microsoft has been mentioning about this even before the Xbox Series X was launch. During E3 2019, Xbox said that Xbox Series X would also play Xbox One games. However, this time, Microsoft explicitly said that the Xbox Series X would not launch with a dedicated list of first-party exclusives, which is the case for nearly every new generation gaming console over the past couple of decades.

“Halo Infinite” is among the first-party exclusive titles confirmed to be available on Xbox One, Windows 10, as well as on Microsoft’s next-generation gaming console. The head of Microsoft Studio clarified in the interview that this would be the setup for each new first-party games published under Xbox Game Studios for at least one year after the release of Xbox Series X.

Microsoft is hopeful that the powerful specs of the Xbox Series X will be its key selling points. The company has not yet revealed the release date of its next-generation gaming console. So far, Microsoft said that the Xbox Series X would arrive sometime in the holiday of 2020.