Xbox Podcast Set For Later This Week

It is fun watching people convulse themselves all over social media to defend a thing made by a large company that honestly doesn’t care about them. I could be talking about any number of things right now, as it seems en vogue to do so about any small thing, but today like we have all week, we’re talking about Xbox. It was only last Tuesday that we reported that Uncle Phil had addressed the rumors from the weekend prior. Those rumors include a PlayStation 5 port of Starfield late this year, and a post-Xbox and PC launch on PS5 of Indiana Jones too.

Only yesterday we addressed the other details that broke over this past weekend, describing that we’ll continue to get Xbox consoles in the meantime. However, we didn’t know exactly when this – (can we even call it a press conference?) will come. It is more of an emergency address to the public over news broken by the press. Xbox itself is calling it the “Official Xbox Podcast,” because that’s what we need, more podcasts. Either way, we know when it will be. It will air on Thursday, February 15th, at midday Pacific, 3 PM Eastern, 8 PM GMT.

Just my luck, as we published, Xbox had to announce it. As can be found on Twitter, what we know so far is that: Phil Spencer, Sarah Bond, and Matt Booty (we’ll giggle and move on) are set to talk about the Xbox business. While I don’t expect this to be earth-shattering, I do expect there to be a note that Xbox titles/IP will be timed exclusives, with a long-term goal of adding the Game Pass and Xbox Cloud Gaming eco-systems to other platforms where available. It was already noted last month that Game Pass is now available on Meta Quest.

I stand by the statement that Xbox needs to pivot the console narrative, possibly changing the notion that the exclusives sell the consoles but the low barrier for entry and Game Pass eco-system does. The Xbox platform is the cheapest way to play games right now, like it or not. A decent PC to keep up with larger titles as well as indies can set you back a good few hundred, PlayStation is closer to $500 than it is to $300, but a Series S with three months of Game Pass? That’s under $300 for the base model and $350 for the 1TB.

Don’t get me wrong, there are reasons you’d want a Switch or a PlayStation, but not everyone can afford $600 for a console, an extra controller, and a game. With the standard editions of games this generation costing $70, which on top of high console prices, makes Game Pass the more economical option in the short term. In the long term, it can be pricey, but you have access to so many games I don’t understand why this isn’t the angle posed more often. As an entry-level to gaming, that’s great.