Redmond, Washington – Microsoft on Thursday shook up the gaming world with word it is making some once-exclusive Xbox video games available for play on rival consoles.

Xbox head Phil Spencer did not specify which titles were expanding beyond the Xbox.

But the Verge, citing unnamed sources, said they will be Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment, Sea of Thieves and Grounded, and will likely be available on PS5 and Nintendo Switch.

"Over the next five or 10 years, games that are exclusive to one piece of hardware are going to be a smaller and smaller part of the game industry," Spencer said in a podcast.

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But Xbox is not changing its "fundamental exclusive strategy," with "no promise" of more games to follow, he said.

"So if you're on those other platforms, and you see these four games coming, please don't take it as some signal that everything's coming. It's not."

The huge move comes as Microsoft looks to boost Xbox sales that have lagged those of Sony PlayStation consoles, and to ramp up revenue from subscriptions to its cloud gaming service.

By putting its weight behind software and subscriptions, Xbox could be trying to match the success of TV streaming giant Netflix.

Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo have long competed to be the console of choice, with exclusive blockbuster titles from their own studios or in deals with other game makers.

Outside studios, in contrast, typically seek to reach the broadest number of gamers with big-name titles playable on all consoles and Windows-powered computers (PCs).

"Why did Xbox wait one week and let their entire community have a meltdown if the only thing worth reporting was that four smallish titles are going to go multi-platform?" wrote a member of a Reddit forum devoted to the Spencer podcast.

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Another member of the forum argued this is just the start of Xbox games heading for PlayStation and other rivals.

"This is a major deal," the forum member wrote. "When they started porting games to PC they said it would only be a few and now look at it."

Sales from Xbox content and services were up 61% in the final three months of last year, driven mostly by Microsoft's acquisition of Call of Duty maker Activision Blizzard, according to quarterly earnings figures.

Microsoft launched its blockbuster takeover in January 2022, an acquisition that made it the world's third-largest gaming company by revenue.