Summary
- Xbox plans to have a significant presence at GDC 2025, promoting its accessibility across multiple devices.
- Xbox has shifted to a multiplatform first-party strategy, leading to former exclusives appearing on other platforms.
- Xbox aims to attract game developers to create games for its ecosystem, emphasizing the potential reach to players worldwide.
Xbox is set to play a big role at this year's Game Developers Conference (GDC). Every year, GDC serves as a week-long gathering where game developers large and small from across the world meet up to network, learn, share ideas, and celebrate the development side of the video game industry. Several large panels and even a few award shows, like the Game Developers Choice Awards and the Independent Games Festival, take place during GDC week. Xbox typically shows up big at GDC and this year seems no different.
The Xbox brand has been going through some big changes in the past year or so. Its controversial shift to more of a multiplatform first-party strategy has left many Xbox fans disheartened as former Xbox console exclusives pop up on other platforms. This third-party push started about a year ago with a handful of smaller first-party games, like Sea of Thieves, Grounded, Pentiment, and Hi-Fi Rush. Then, more and more large Xbox titles began to confirm PlayStation 5 releases, like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and, most recently, Xbox's 2021 arcade racing masterpiece Forza Horizon 5. Microsoft's "This is an Xbox" ad campaign, which launched late last year, brought its strategy into clearer focus, communicating the brand's desire to be as accessible as possible across screens and devices of all kinds.
Xbox Still Has 'A Bunch of Stuff' Left to Announce
Despite Fable's recent delay into 2026, Xbox assures fans it still has plenty of games in the pipeline, some of which still have yet to be revealed.
Now, with GDC 2025 right around the corner, beginning on March 17, Xbox looks to be preparing to have a massive presence. Microsoft announced that Xbox is confirmed to be attending GDC this year, and will take part in a number of conferences, panels, and even serve as a sponsor for the Independent Games Festival. Most interestingly, Xbox seems to be using parts of its "This is an Xbox" ad campaign to advertise its presence to developers at GDC this year. In its post, Xbox used an image with the campaign's same font stylings, as well as the same depiction of different types of devices with the Xbox app loaded.
Xbox is Looking to Show Up Big at GDC 2025
Earlier this week on the Official Xbox Podcast, head of Xbox Game Studios Crag Duncan said that "Everyone that makes a game wants it to reach as many players as possible," and it seems that Xbox is looking to use this sentiment to attract game developers to create games for the Xbox ecosystem. Supporting this is the message in Xbox's GDC 2025 announcement image, "Develop for Xbox anywhere, reach players everywhere," written in bold green letters. More developers signing on to put their games on Xbox only means good things for Xbox gamers, who will have the opportunity to play more games from developers who previously may not have been considering shipping on Xbox.
GDC is going live in just a few weeks and there's no telling the types of hardware or software news that may come out of the event. While Phil Spencer has already confirmed that the heavily rumored Xbox handheld device is indeed in development, Xbox fans shouldn't expect any word about it at GDC 2025 next month, as Spencer mentioned it's several years away.
- Brand
- Microsoft
- Operating System
- Proprietary (Windows-based)
- Storage
- 1TB WD SN530 NVMe SSD
- VR Support
- No
- Resolution
- 720p - 4K UHD
- App Store
- Microsoft Store