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Grounded, Pentiment, Hi-Fi Rush and Sea of Thieves will be the first Xbox exclusives to hit PS5 and the Nintendo Switch.
Nintendo’s latest Partner Showcase Direct has confirmed that former Xbox exclusives Grounded and Pentiment are coming to the Nintendo Switch. Additionally, Hi-Fi Rush and Sea of Thieves are planned to launch on the PlayStation 5 later in April, making these the first four first-party Xbox games to break console and PC exclusivity. Pentiment will be the first of these games to launch on the Nintendo Switch this Thursday.
Xbox exclusives are getting multi-platform releases for the first time
This week’s Nintendo Direct announced that Pentiment and Grounded, both games developed by Obsidian Entertainment and published by Xbox Game Studios, are coming to the Nintendo Switch. A few hours after the Direct aired, Microsoft also confirmed that Tango Gameworks’ Hi-Fi Rush and Rare’s Sea of Thieves will launch on the PS5 this April. Pentiment and Grounded are also coming to the PS5 as well, making all four games the first Xbox exclusives to… not be exclusive.
These are the games' multi-platform release dates:
- Pentiment (PS4, PS5, and Nintendo Switch): February 22
- Hi-Fi Rush (PS5): March 19
- Grounded (PS4, PS5 and Nintendo Switch): April 16
- Sea of Thieves (PS5): April 30
Sea of Thieves and Hi-Fi Rush are the only games to go without a Nintendo Switch release. Microsoft first announced that four mystery Xbox-exclusive games would be arriving on the PS5 and Nintendo Switch earlier this month, but failed to name them until now. The company was forced to make a statement after rumours began flying that many of its Xbox exclusives were planned to launch on other platforms, such as Starfield and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.
Microsoft confirmed that while Starfield and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will remain Xbox-exclusive, these four games are adopting a new multi-platform release strategy. For multiplayer games like Grounded and Sea of Thieves, crossplay will be enabled across all platforms too. For those unfamiliar, Pentiment is a historical RPG that has players solve a lengthy murder mystery, while Grounded is a survival game that shrinks them down to the size of insects in their own backyard. Sea of Thieves is a multiplayer pirate game while Hi-Fi Rush is a rhythm-based action game.