They'll likely push out the games that were already being produced for Xbox and PlayStation before MS cancelled them.
What I'm really curious about is whether MS will release games for PS5 or just PS4. That would mean no DualSense features, or stuff like taking advantage of the SSD.
That makes sense. Games by BGS would have most of the tools and engine compatibilities sorted out due to being 3rd party and still releasing content on PS, while a game like Sea of Thieves would have some extensive work to port it to Sony's API. Which also makes me think: Rare would have to ask Sony for PS5 devkits, right? So some publishing contract on PSN would have been signed some time ago; Sony wouldn't give them away just like that.
You think they might do what happened with Psychonauts 2? It would depend on the game I guess. HFR is not on XOne so I doubt it'll release on PS4 and SoT is a GAAS so it would be better to have the native app if they want to monetize it effectively.
I think they might be closer than we think. A few evidence would be:
- These rumors popping up now
- Stephen saying that Sea of Thieves is slated to release on PS5 early 2024
- Tim Stuart's recent comments (~45 days ago) about having first-party games on PlayStation and Nintendo
- Some of the defense narrative by the usual suspects / "journalists"
- The fact that Microsoft hasn't denied anything. If it were very much far away, they could deny it right now and enough time would have passed by the team of release.
You raise valid points. We have Totillo, Grubb, Jez, Nate all coming out and saying the same thing while Warren and others doing some light "damage control", fermenting the idea that "hey it is all money for MS and GP, GP will still be the main exclusive, they already said games on every screen". So it has a sense that it's more controlled than just some employee leaking stuff to his pals.
Stuart's comments had the most weight since he was addressing investors and Spencer's "rebuttal" was just controlled marketing, denying GP on competitors but not having the interviewer call him out on not specifying 1st party games bought a la carte.
Your last point is also true. When the court leak happened, Spencer was quick to go on Twitter and do the PR: "it's such a shame, these are old plans, etc etc". Now no one says anything, not even a simple "we won't comment on rumours".