Sure, there's still a delay for PlayStation players here, but the fact that the community already knows about a PS5 port takes away much of the excitement about The Great Circle being an Xbox first-party release. In fact, aside from Xbox Game Pass — and a little bit of FOMO from waiting a few months — there really is no massive push from Microsoft to sell this as an Xbox game first and foremost.
And... maybe that's okay? Honestly, we're not quite sure at the moment - we're still processing the news and what it really means for the future of Xbox. While the brilliance of Xbox Game Pass and Microsoft's stacked first-party pipeline still has us excited for the future, we can't deny that this feels a little bit like Xbox's first big move towards becoming more of a platform-agnostic game publisher. Acknowledging and announcing a PS5 port pre-launch is certainly a move in that direction.
Ultimately, we have to continue with a 'wait and see' approach here, like we seem to be doing with Xbox a lot as of late. While the games keep flowing and Game Pass keeps growing, that approach is okay, but we do wonder how the team will position itself when it comes to the next generation. We know Xbox can build great hardware, but, will there be enough of an incentive to go out and buy a next-gen Xbox ?
One other thing we want to mention here is that, emotions aside, an Indiana Jones game coming to multiple platforms does make a lot of sense. It's a hugely popular IP that already sells itself to PlayStation gamers, and maybe that's come into Microsoft's thinking here. At this point though, we're starting to think that anything is on the table - maybe even some of our classic, beloved Xbox IP. This is a bold step for Team Green, and we're intrigued to see how it all pans out.
