What does ‘Xbox’ actually mean, in 2024? The name suggests a physical object, of course, but recent events suggest Microsoft is paying about as much attention to the increasingly dusty black cuboid under our TV as we have been of late. Not that it seems to have an alternative definition prepared – its business-update broadcast in February had the feel of a meeting called to try to answer this very question, Phil Spencer and co offering a variety of possible options. The most striking one, ultimately? “One of the largest publishers on PlayStation [and] on Nintendo Switch.”
It’s a counter-intuitive way of describing a current platform holder, even if the underpinning facts are well known. Many of the studios and publishers Microsoft has rolled up over the years were midway through projects, and thus presumably committed to other platforms: Double Fine’s Psychonauts 2, InXile’s Wasteland 3, Bethesda’s Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo, not to mention its ongoing support for ESO and Fallout 76. More to the point, it owns Minecraft and now Call Of Duty, two of the biggest series in videogames. Indeed, we have to wonder if the developments that triggered February’s broadcast are a knock-on result of the Activision-Blizzard acquisition, and the assurances regarding COD’s future on other platforms that had to be made to get the deal through regulators. (Indeed, an interview with the
