Earlier this month, we learned that the Xbox team had secured a “strategic partnership” with SEGA, which will see Microsoft helping the Japanese publisher with next-gen and cloud-oriented game development. This has obviously brought up additional rumours around future Sega games being exclusive to Xbox, but the company has now clarified that it will continue to release games across multiple platforms.
During Sega's recent quarterly earnings meeting (via VGC), the company explained that while it has “a very close business relationship with Microsoft”, the company is “not talking about releasing games to Microsoft exclusively”.
Currently, Sega has agreed to work with Microsoft and utilise its Azure cloud services to aid the development of a ‘Super Game', as a mid to long-term project. This will be a “major global title” and will focus on creating a global online community that will also lean into “IP utilisation”, indicating a metaverse style project that will meld multiple Sega IPs together with crossover events.
As Sega puts it, Microsoft was “sympathetic to that vision”, which led to the partnership on cloud and Azure. With that in mind, don't expect Sega titles to suddenly be exclusive to Xbox, or for Microsoft to acquire Sega.
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KitGuru Says: This is a long-term project for Sega and from the sounds of it, it is very experimental. As one of the biggest providers of cloud services in the world, it does make a lot of sense for Sega to team up with Microsoft on this.