It has been quite the week for those of us into gaming, what with Xbox announcing that it intends to go cross-platform with four (as-yet-unnamed) exclusives coming to PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch in the future. I'm assuming there will be even more titles thereafter – and a T3 colleague has already dreamt up 5 Xbox exclusives he'd love to play on his PS5 – although that's something Microsoft needs to address directly.
Personally, I don't feel great about this. That's because during last year's Black Friday sales I went all-out as Microsoft lured me away from my beloved PlayStation 5 with a Bethesda exclusive in the shape of Starfield and I bought an Xbox Series X (which I'm still paying off in instalments, thanks Amazon).
If that game was to come to Sony's console in the future then, well, why did I bother dropping my cash on Microsoft? It's ultimately made me think: forget the next Xbox. Sure, I know, it promises to be "the largest technical leap ever seen" and all that jazz, but, y'know what? Now I'm not sure I care, because the not-exclusive exclusives could end up on any platform anyway.
So I've diverted my attention away with another sideline dream: the rumour mill chit-chat has been churning hard about the possibility of a Nintendo Switch 2 launching in the not-too-distant future! Will it? Won't it? I honsetly don't know, but I do know that I'm super excited for Nintendo's next console, more so than Microsoft's – and have already penned 5 features that would make the Switch 2 an instabuy.
Think about it: the Nintendo Switch hasn't been a success because you can play less graphically appealing and late-delivered ports of AAA games. It's a success because, one, its handheld format reinvigorated the gaming console world and, two, because it has some of the most valuable and downright entertaining franchises in the world.
Having already explored 3 Switch 2 games we'd love to see, I'm only more excited for more Mario, more Link, more Yoshi, more everything Nintendo that'll no doubt come to the Switch 2 as and when it's revealed. And I'm 99.9% sure that Nintendo will never ever push its intellectual property into the hands of the competition. That kind of trust and the near guarantee of every first-party Nintendo title being a stellar 5-star smash hit keeps gamers like me coming back for a lifetime.
Not that I'm rubbishing my Xbox Series X just yet, of course. It looks very neat under my telly (one of the best OLED TVs, I hasten to add). And given that Xbox Game Pass won't be coming to other platforms, i.e. PS5 or Switch, you're safe in the knowledge that a subscription to that service is always going to net you the best new games on Microsoft's platform first.
Being the first to play is a really important factor for many; being able to dig deep into a game while the hype is hot and others are non-stop talking about a game is a great place to be – that kind of hype I can't imagine on a port some years later. But I can think of more Nintendo classics than I can Xbox ones, which only adds more enthusiasm for my 'team next Switch' over 'team next Xbox' stance. I've no doubt that both will be great though – so we're all winners in the end.
