There's obviously been a lot of focus on the future of Xbox at this week's GDC 2026 presentations, and Microsoft executive / ID@Xbox director Guy Richards has been speaking about this in a recent interview with The Game Business.
Richards was asked during the interview about why developers and publishers, particularly on the indie side of things (because of his role at ID@Xbox), should "work with Xbox specifically" when they could focus on Steam and "potentially achieve similar results". The Microsoft exec responded by explaining that due to Xbox's future "where you will be able to build once and ship everywhere", we'll be seeing "more games come to Xbox quicker".
"We’re working towards a future where you will be able to build once and ship everywhere. By making it easier, we will see more games come to Xbox quicker. If you’re a developer, putting your game out across as many different store fronts and platforms increases your opportunities for sales. We are differentiating and making sure it is as easy as possible for players to carry on playing wherever they’re playing [with Xbox Play Anywere]. Xbox is a great home for developers. We have a really engaged, high spending audience. It’s a great place to bring and sell games.”
The exec reportedly highlighted success stories like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Ready Or Not and Hollow Knight: Silksong when talking about this, as well as the less high-profile successes where small teams have been able to make around $100,000 or $200,000 from their games on Xbox. In fact, he says there are "as many developers as ever making that amount of money on Xbox", and that the ID@Xbox team is always trying to prioritise discoverability and pushing smaller games "upwards in the rankings".
All of this sounds very promising, especially considering there are many Steam indie titles (like PEAK, Super Battle Golf, Schedule 1 and so many others) that end up proving mega popular but don't get Xbox ports either until years later, or sometimes not at all. The new Project Helix Xbox console should make this much easier as well, as we already know it's going to support PC games - so bringing them from Steam to the Xbox Store hopefully won't present anywhere near as many hurdles in the next generation. Exciting stuff!