Not long ago, there were rumours that Microsoft wanted to port
Halo: The Master Chief Collection over to the PlayStation 4. Evidently, that didn't come to fruition. Now,
Kotaku has delivered the question directly to Xbox's very own Phil Spencer: Will
Halo be branching out from the Xbox to other platforms like the PlayStation or Nintendo Switch?
No, unfortunately not. Spencer explained that, at least for now, we won't be seeing major Xbox titles make the leap to other platforms. The head of the Xbox brand spoke a bunch of jargon about how they want to keep their ecosystem connected and allow players to seamlessly move their save games and friends lists to other ecosystems.
"The games themselves are critically important to players and people playing. But ensuring that you have a connected ecosystem with the players, where people’s save game and their state and their friends list and their entitlements move seamlessly from every ecosystem—from every device—that they want to play on is critical," said Spencer. "There aren’t other systems where we can go do that today."
It's a bit vague and confusing but; Spencer is basically saying that for
Halo, as well as any other major Xbox title, to make its way onto the PlayStation or Nintendo Switch, Xbox Live must come along with it. This is likely the reason for discussions between Xbox and PlayStation deteriorating as the latter are likely opposed to housing the former's service - especially when they already have their own similar one in place.
"Today on the Switch, what we’re able to do is we have Xbox Live on the Switch so we can keep those communities connected. And we have, as you pointed out, a certain number of franchises that have shipped over there," Spencer references games like
Cuphead which recently made its way onto the Switch but was, at first, an Xbox exclusive.
The Xbox boss then clarified that just because some Xbox titles are being shifted to other platforms, that doesn't mean the Xbox itself is going anywhere any time soon:
"In the end we think us having a native platform in the home for years is going to be critical for to continue to push our vision of where the gaming platform should be."