Jez Corden Clarifies Microsoft Is Not Planning to Pull Out of Steam—He Was Misunderstood

Recently, there has been speculation that Microsoft, as part of building out its Xbox ecosystem, might stop releasing future games on Steam and focus solely on its own digital store. However, it turned out that the person behind this speculation was misunderstood.

The scoop came from Windows Central editor Jez Corden during a recent episode of the Rand al Thor 19 podcast. The news spread fast across forums and social media, leaving a lot of gamers disappointed. But as it turned out, Corden's words had been taken out of context. He released a statement on X, in which he denied Microsoft would stop releasing games on Steam, adding that he'd been misinterpreted. You can check out his full statement below:

“I REALLY doubt they will, but they're doing something that could potentially give them a window to do so, but there's just too much money to be left on the table imo. It was part of a bigger discussion.

There's no evidence Microsoft is planning to quit Steam. Steam is so much income right now. I figure they'd only pull out of Steam if that fact were to change, but I see no reason to think it would.”

As Corden rightly pointed out, Steam gives Microsoft extra—and sometimes quite substantial—revenue from its games. For instance, Forza Horizon 6's spring release became the biggest launch ever for Xbox, both in player engagement and sales. Meanwhile, the company will clearly keep expanding its ecosystem; the recent reveal of Xbox backward compatibility for PC is proof of that, with four games—Blinx: The Time Sweeper, Conker: Live and Reloaded, Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge, and Fuzion Frenzy—now available to players.

According to Jason Ronald, Vice President of Next Generation at Xbox, this is just the tip of the iceberg compared to the company's broader PC plans, reaffirming that PC gaming remains a top priority. Meanwhile, dataminers have already found evidence Microsoft plans to add Xbox 360 game support on PC. This comes from mentions of the XeO3 emulator—the same one used to run Xbox 360 games on newer consoles like the Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S—which was discovered in Fuzion Frenzy's files.