Rumor: Xbox Game Pass Coming To The Nintendo Switch This Year
Are you sitting down? If not you might want to! So, this is just a rumor as of now, but multiple sources have begun to leak information that at first seems preposterous, but is apparently quite possible. According to Direct Feed Games and Game Informer, it appears that Microsoft and Nintendo may have reached a deal for Xbox One games to come to the Switch! This would occur in two ways.
First up, apparently Microsoft has agreed to publish some of its titles directly on the Switch. The first will supposedly be Ori and the Blind Forest, a 2D Metroidvania indie game that is highly regarded. Now obviously the Switch is nowhere near as powerful as the Xbox One system, so Microsoft is (according to the rumors) bringing Xbox Game Pass to the Switch, most likely later this year. This would allow Switch users to stream Xbox One games to the system, and since they’re not bound by the Switch’s CPU they can theoretically look just like the Xbox One versions of the games.
For those not familiar with Xbox Game Pass, it’s a monthly service filled with various games for the Xbox One. It has a monthly fee, sort of like Netflix, and the best part is that all of Microsoft’s first party games are promised to be coming on release date. Right now excellent games like Forza Horizon 4 are playable via the subscription. Of course, for this to work it would mean your Nintendo Switch would need to be hooked up to the internet to stream the games, which does put a damper on playing the Xbox games on the go. Still, this could be a huge deal for those wanting Nintendo’s strong first-party lineup as well as access to Microsoft’s library of games.
This streaming solution to run games deemed too intensive to run on the Switch isn’t anything new. In fact, in Japan both Resident Evil 7 and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey have launched via streaming services and it’s supposedly rather good. With Microsoft’s excellent Xbox Live infrastructure in place, this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship between the two console makers. Plus that means that maybe (just maybe) Rare could put games on a Nintendo system once again!
[Sources: Direct Feed Games & Game Informer]
Craig has been covering the video game industry since 1995. His work has been published across a wide spectrum of media sites. He’s currently the Editor-In-Chief of Nintendo Times and contributes to Gaming Age.
