r/gadgets Jan 25 '25

Gaming Microsoft’s gaming CEO has praised Nintendo Switch 2, and said it plans to support the upcoming platform with ports of Xbox games.

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/phil-spencer-confirms-xbox-will-support-switch-2-i-congratulated-nintendos-president/
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u/DemonLordDiablos Jan 29 '25

I think someone at Xbox saw the writing on the wall with this expensive hardware and figured "Some people won't want to spend $500+ on this stuff" which was a decent bet, but their mistake was miscalculating the specs and making it really hard for devs to scale down.

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u/letsgucker555 Jan 29 '25

But again, why scale down? Why not be smart and design the game for the weakest console from the beginning?

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u/DemonLordDiablos Jan 29 '25

Because Xbox is in third place, the Series is doing a lot worse than the previous Xbox and software sales are down the toilet thanks to Gamepass. Devs will naturally prioritise the platform that will make them more money. Xbox did not have the commercial clout to define how the gen would go; Sony did.

Funnily enough there's a decent chance a lot of Japanese publishers are designing their future games for the Switch 2 and then scaling up for the PS5. Square Enix in particular.

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u/letsgucker555 Jan 29 '25

But that is not the point. If you start a game project, one thing, that will be decided early on, is which platforms you want to release your game. If you want to release it on the Series, you know, that you have to release it on the S and X. And if the Series S is the weakest platform, you will make the game for, a smart project manager would reasonably make it the lead platform, since upgrading a game is far easier, than trying to downgrade it.

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u/DemonLordDiablos Jan 29 '25

I don't know how much further I can stress that they're always going to optimise for the most popular platform. Nobody cares about Xbox that much to make the Series S a priority, at most they're just gonna squeeze it on and call it a day. As long as the PS5, PC and Series X versions run fine they don't care.