We saw plenty of great Xbox announcements following this week’s Nintendo Indie Direct event, but one game that was notably missing was Oxenfree 2, which has now been announced for pretty much everything except Xbox.
Specifically, Oxenfree 2 is coming to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Steam and even Netflix (!) on July 12th, 2023, but at least at the time of writing, there’s no sign of an Xbox version in the works.
We’ve assumed this would be the case for a while, but it’s still surprising considering the first game has even been part of Xbox Game Pass in the past. This news, combined with other publishers recently choosing to skip Xbox for their games, has even led to the phrase “No Xbox” trending on Twitter over the past few hours:
Seeing “No Xbox” as a trending topic is… worrying, in the case of optics. A noticeable string of games not coming to the brand/platform is eyebrow-raising.
Not like the brand is “dead”— far from it— but confidence levels aren’t exactly high, either.— Pete Skerritt (@PeteSkerritt) April 20, 2023
Looking through these “No Xbox” tweets, a lot of them are obviously focused around Oxenfree 2 as you’d expect, but others are also highlighting the lack of a release for the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster series, and some are also pointing towards a game called Trip World DX which is launching on PS4, PS5, Switch and even Game Boy Color!
Forgot they got purchased by Netflix, but even still… it’s coming to EVERY platform except Xbox.
This keeps happening.— Jez 💀 (@JezCorden) April 19, 2023
Like why is there no xbox version and this is the reason why i don’t support square Enix anymore https://t.co/Smeyg0lAcj— peter williams (@peterMichaelwi3) April 19, 2023
How on earth is this on GameBoy but not on Xbox lol? https://t.co/M51wt6nwrZ— DeadGuy (@graphics_rtx) April 20, 2023
The Oxenfree 2 news isn’t a good look for Xbox, but who knows – we might end up seeing it on the platform before the year is out, so let’s not get too downhearted just yet. There definitely seems to be a trend where a few publishers are skipping Xbox with certain games right now though, particularly when it comes to Square Enix.
As mentioned, there were still lots of great reveals for Xbox last night, and you can check those out below. We’d also love to hear your thoughts about this entire situation down in the comments – it should generate quite a discussion!
