It’s official: Microsoft is bringing some Xbox-exclusive games to PS5 and Nintendo Switch. It’s part of a broader strategy shift inside Microsoft’s gaming business to grow games beyond just the company’s Xbox consoles.

“We’ve made the decision that we’re going to take four games to the other consoles,” reveals Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer on the official Xbox podcast. Bizarrely, Microsoft is refusing to name the four titles, but the company says that two are community-driven games and the other two are smaller titles.

Sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans tell me the first two titles will be Hi-Fi Rush and Pentiment, followed by Sea of Thieves and Grounded. Spencer claims there hasn’t been a change to the company doing Xbox exclusives, yet, at the same time, he also thinks there will be fewer console exclusives across the industry over the next decade.

Microsoft: four Xbox-exclusive games are coming to PS5 and Nintendo Switch - The Verge

So, not every Xbox game is suddenly going to appear on rival consoles, but Microsoft is clearly considering the potential for more in the future. I asked Spencer whether there will be more multiplatform games, especially if these four are successful:

Yeah, but we haven’t seen that yet. We’re obviously one of the biggest publishers on PlayStation and Nintendo today, when you think about the Activision Blizzard and Bethesda lineup of games. So we know what it means to ship games on Steam, PlayStation, Nintendo, and Xbox.

These are games that originally launched on Xbox. They were Xbox-branded games and we want to see what happens, because going and doing the development work to bring them to new platforms is real work. We want to make sure that the return makes sense. We want to make sure the audience that’s there has an appetite, maybe they don’t.

Microsoft is now seizing an opportunity to put its games elsewhere, or “Xbox Everywhere” as the company refers to it internally. “We’re making these decisions for some specific reasons,” says Spencer. “We make every decision with the long-term health of Xbox in mind, which means a growing platform, our games performing, building the best platform for creators, reaching as many players as we can. We’re always looking to learn as a leadership team and to grow, and we think this is an interesting point in time for us to use what some of the other platforms have right now to help grow our franchises.”

Xbox fan reactions will inform Microsoft’s next steps. “I always take the feedback from our most ardent fans very seriously,” admits Spencer, who’s not sold on the idea of exclusives always helping Xbox console sales. “We know today when people are playing, their affinity for their platform is as much about their friends and where their games library is as it is any kind of one exclusive game. I know there’s this fictitious world where people think that one exclusive game kind of kicks off the sales of a platform, but the industry just doesn’t really work that way today.”