There’s no nostalgia trip for Xbox players (Capcom)
A number of third party games shown in the Nintendo Direct are set to skip Xbox entirely, including Darkest Dungeon 2 and Hello Kitty Island Adventure.
As Xbox begins to pivot towards its next gen plans, in the wake of poor Xbox Series X/S sales, it seems many multiplatform games are already dropping support for the console.
Earlier this year, there were reports suggesting third party publishers were questioning the idea of continuing to support the system, as the PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch take up the lion’s share of the console market.
A number of games have skipped Xbox in recent months, such as Monster Hunter Stories and Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster, but a surprisingly large number of titles shown in the June 2024 Nintendo Direct are also choosing to neglect the platform.
One of the most prominent examples is Marvel Vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics, which includes X-Men Children Of The Atom, Marvel Super Heroes, X-Men Vs. Street Fighter, Marvel Super Heroes Vs. Street Fighter, Marvel Vs. Capcom Clash Of Super Heroes, Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 New Age Of Heroes, and The Punisher in one bundle.
As confirmed by Capcom, the compilation is only coming to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and PC this year, leading some players to cry fowl over the omission. ‘No Xbox? C’mon now Capcom. This is nonsense,’ one Twitter user wrote in response.
Several other third party titles from the presentation are also skipping Xbox, including Hello Kitty Island Adventure, the console version of Darkest Dungeon 2, and Lego Horizon Adventures (which is being published by Sony).
While these are smaller titles, leaving Xbox out is becoming more common and the concern for fans is that it will begin to include ever more prominent releases. The Xbox hasn’t missed out on a triple-A title yet, but the early transition to next gen hardware may cause that to happen sooner than it might otherwise have.
Perhaps thanks to Game Pass, and the fact that Xbox owners generally buy more digital titles than other formats, many retailers have already stopped selling physical Xbox games. The CEO of Limited Run Games, which sells physical copies of smaller titles, recently stated that they have cut back on selling Xbox versions because there isn’t a market for it.
When addressing why Limited Run’s versions of Felix The Cat and Rocket Knight Adventures Re-Sparked skipped Xbox earlier this year, the company’s CEO Josh Fairhurst said: ‘If we could count on selling 5,000+ of a title physically on Xbox, we could justify the ports without a digital stake, but we only sell those kinds of numbers on PlayStation and Switch. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Xbox gamers are digital first.
‘It’s not that we can’t develop Xbox ports or that we’re too cheap to do it, it’s that we don’t earn anything on the game digitally. Physical game sales are not high enough on Xbox to offset our development costs, so we have no option but to skip Xbox on these titles.’
As more smaller games continue to sideline Xbox though, this trend could become a significant issue for Microsoft, if this message filters through to its current Xbox players and consumers at large.
Seven Capcom classics make up the new bundle (Capcom)
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