It’s been a wild day in the video game industry. Headlines have blared about the potential merger of Microsoft and Activision Blizzard, with no end in sight. Some persistent questions about the future of these franchises still burn. When Xbox purchased Bethesda, there was a ton of rumor about the future of their games both new and old. Microsoft later confirmed that their major upcoming release, Starfield, would be exclusive to the Xbox and PC family.
And with the new deal worth $70 billion, Microsoft will certainly be trying everything they can to get games onto shelves, making money. It’s pretty obvious that Game Pass on both PC and Xbox are about to get a huge boost of new games. But the actual list of new games is unknown. Another burning question surrounds exclusivity. Could Microsoft push certain iconic franchises away from the Switch and PlayStation, in a bid to better compete? So what of it, could the legendary Starcraft make the lightspeed jump to Xbox?
Will Starcraft become an Xbox exclusive?
There has been no official announcement from Microsoft, Activision, or Blizzard about what games will become an Xbox exclusive or not. There has been plenty of speculation about the big names under the umbrella of these companies.
Diablo, Hearthstone, World of Warcraft and so many major Blizzard IPs may soon be owned by Microsoft. We may even see a resurgence of some classic gems of the past. But it seems most likely that the company will pour the most effort into getting the biggest games behind the Xbox Series S/X, hoping to sell more units. The older franchises may be a bit left by the wayside.
And it’s entirely unheard of for strategy games and the RTS genre to leap onto consoles. Iconic franchises like Command&Conquer had console ports across many console generations. More recently, Stellaris: Console Edition brought the grand strategy hit to the Xbox family. So it’s not impossible. And with Starcraft, it’s probably the most well-known RTS franchise ever, and would be well-suited to grabbing a new audience on the Xbox.
The biggest issue is that the parent company may not want to pout money into developing a console port for Starcraft. This may also be true for many other classic games. The time and money it would take to develop a working and fun-to-play version of these games on Xbox may not be worth it. Some of these franchises have been dormant for years, so the Redmond outfit may let sleeping dogs lie while they focus on other projects.
