Publisher support for Xbox drops as Marvel Vs. Capcom skips the console

Earlier this year, reports surfaced suggesting that third-party publishers were questioning the idea of ​​continuing to support the system as the PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch take 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 also chose 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 package.

As confirmed by Capcom, the compilation is only coming to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and PC this year, leading some gamers to cry foul over the omission. “No Xbox? Come on Capcom. This is nonsense,” wrote one Twitter user 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).

Even though these are smaller titles, Xbox omissions are becoming more common, and fans fear that it will start to include more and more major releases. Xbox has yet to lose a triple-A title, but the early transition to next-gen hardware may cause that to happen sooner than it otherwise would.

Perhaps also 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 limited sales of the Xbox versions because there is no market for them.

When discussing why the Limited Run versions of Felix The Cat and Rocket Knight Adventures Re-Sparked missed the Xbox earlier this year, CEO Josh Fairhurst said: “If we could count on selling over 5,000 titles physically on Xbox, we could to justify it. ports with no digital stake, but we only sell these 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 make any money from the game digitally. The sales of physical games are not high enough on Xbox to offset our development costs, so we have no choice but to skip Xbox for these titles.”

As more and more smaller games push Xbox to the sidelines, this trend could become a significant problem for Microsoft if this message filters down to its current Xbox players and consumers in general.