That's an interesting point.  It's not that they do (or don't count), it's that it's essentially a different platform.  A bit like whether 32X and/or Sega CD games should count when considering the Sega Genesis library.  Reasonable people could disagree on whether they count or not.  :)

The Last Hero of Nostalgia is coming to Xbox and PC, but not PS. https://www.vgchartz.com/article/451915/the-last-hero-of-nostalgaia-announced-for-xbox-series-xs-xbox-one-and-pc/ No suggestion of paid exclusivity, it appears to be developer and/or publisher decision at this point. A little surprising that it's not coming to PS given it's a parody of the Souls games, so it could be a further sign of PS games sales becoming increasingly AAA and FTP driven, with indies getting squeezed between the two.

Ditto "Scorn". https://www.vgchartz.com/article/451911/scorn-arrives-in-october-2022-for-the-xbox-series-xs-and-pc/

Posting these for those who wanted evidence of a potential trend.

There's plenty of games going to Playstation & PC, but not Xbox. Do we really have to do this? It happens on all 3 systems.

I think the 8th gen consoles may get AAA support longer than we're used to for two primary reasons:

1) lots of people are going to have trouble getting the new generation systems for at least another year, it seems. So, there will still be a lot of active gamers on the last generation consoles for a while.

2) It just isn't hard to make the games work across all of the systems, since they're all basically just PCs now. Porting costs are low, in other words.

There will always be some indies going just to PC, or just to Switch, or just to Switch and PC.

Not long ago, though, it was almost inconceivable of an indie that did come to Xbox without also coming to PS, without a financial incentive from Microsoft at least.  There seems to be a growing phenomenon of indies that do come to PC and Xbox (or PC, Xbox, and Switch) without coming to PS, seemingly without Microsoft signing any kind of an exclusivity deal to make that happen.

That trend is new, and therefore worth noting and tracking IMO.

I agree that 8th gen consoles may get AAA support longer than we're used to, for the reasons you said and for other reasons besides.  However, my prediction is that Xbox One support will die out earlier than PS4 support.  I predict this because:

The PS4 outsold the One by about 2.3x, meaning there will likely be PS4s being regularly played for longer, and...

Xbox One (VCR) and Xbox One S are the hardest platforms to scale current-gen games down to, and...

The Series S allows Xbox owners to upgrade to current gen crazy easily/cheapily, and...

A developer can make just an Xbox Series version of a game and offer it to Xbox One owners through game streaming.  (I recognize that streaming isn't suitable for people with bad internet, or who live too far away from the nearest Xblade server farm, but it's good enough, for enough people, to get the developer "off the hook" for having to also make a version for a rapidly shrinking Xbox One market)

So that's the trend to watch for, IMO.

Definitely streaming is going to change things. I guess it's starting right now. I was thinking the other day how I'd like to get a Series S to put in my living room. I would play there very rarely, but it would be nice to have one there for those rare occasions (I already have an S in the bedroom and an X in the basement. This would be a very low usage machine.)  But then I realized that I'll be able to stream most of the stuff I want to my existing Xbox One. So, I don't need to buy another new console.

I'm a hardcore gamer, been playing since 1982. 1982. And I just decided against the purchase of a console because streaming is available. So what is streaming going to do to the casual gamers who  Don't want to invest money and expensive hardware?

Anyway, I know that's a bit off  of the original topic. It's my long way of saying that I agree with you that streaming could play a role.

I don't think it's off-topic at all.  I think the ability to stream games to Xbox One consoles will hasten the demise of AAA ported to Xbox One native code (which is half of the topic).

Why not create just an Xbox Series game, and arrange for that game to be streamed to Xbox One systems?  You don't even need to put it in Game Pass, you could strike a deal with Microsoft to allow streaming of the game from Xbox Live for some kind of server-side fee (one that would likely be less cost than down-porting the game to Xbox One).  In other words, a consumer who buys the game gets cross-buy: the option to stream it to Xbox One consoles, or install it to an Xbox Series console if you later upgrade.  The publisher pays Microsoft more to host the game, but saves millions of dollars of development costs (cross-porting the code, bug-fixing, optimizing, play-testing, etc.).  Microsoft seems to say yes to every business model these days, so I can't see Microsoft refusing that option to a publisher.

"Nobody Saves the World" is coming to Xbox, to Steam, and to Game Pass January 18th, but not to PS (at least not at launch). The Game Pass piece and the fact that it was originally announced via ID@Xbox suggests there might be some kind of deal with Microsoft, but the fact that it's also releasing on Steam suggests that may not be the case. A quick web search didn't bring up any evidence of an exclusivity deal.

https://www.vgchartz.com/article/452133/nobody-saves-the-world-arrives-january-18-for-xbox-series-xs-xbox-one-pc-and-xbox-game-pass/