A number of third-party games shown in the Nintendo Direct will skip the Xbox entirely, including Darkest Dungeon 2 and Hello Kitty Island Adventure.
As Xbox begins to focus on its next-gen plans in the wake of poor Xbox Series X/S sales, it appears that many multiplatform games are already dropping support for the console.
Earlier this year, there were reports that third-party publishers were questioning the idea of continuing to support the system, with the PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch taking 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 surprising number of titles featured 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, including X-Men Children Of The Atom, Marvel Super Heroes, X-Men Vs. Street Fighter, Marvel Superheroes 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, leaving some players crying foul over the omission. ‘No Xbox? Come on, Capcom. This is bullshit,” 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 published by Sony).
While these are smaller titles, Xbox omissions are becoming more common and the concern for fans is that there will be more and more prominent releases. The Xbox hasn’t missed a triple-A title yet, but the early transition to next-gen hardware could mean that happens sooner than it otherwise would.
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 sales of Xbox versions because there is no market for them.
When addressing why the Limited Run versions of Felix The Cat and Rocket Knight Adventures Re-Sparked skipped Xbox earlier this year, company CEO Josh Fairhurst said: “If we could count on having more than 5,000 titles physically on Xbox were to sell, we would sell the ports without digital stakes, 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, but that we don’t make any money from the game digitally. Physical game sales on Xbox are not high enough to offset our development costs, so we have no choice but to skip Xbox for these titles.”
However, as more smaller games continue to sideline Xbox, this trend could become a major issue for Microsoft if this message gets through to current Xbox players and consumers at large.
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