Between finalizing Bethesda’s purchase and bringing 20 of its most beloved games to Xbox Game Pass and securing Square Enix’s Outriders as a day one title for the streaming service, Xbox has made a lot of news in the last week.
Nothing appears to be able to hinder Microsoft’s extension of the service. Nobody predicted Toby Fox’s classic cult indie RPG Undertale to join Game Pass today, marking its first appearance on Xbox consoles.
Undertale was first released for PC in September 2015, and it quickly became a cult hit, with one of the most devoted fanbases for an indie game in gaming history. The game’s innovative combat structure, which required players to converse with enemies to escape combat entirely, was a feature inspired by the Shin Megami Tensei series.
It was a critical and commercial success. Sans, one of the game’s supporting characters and bosses, also appears as a DLC Mii suit in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, making it one of the most successful independent games ever.
In 2017, a physical update from Fangamer and a complete Japanese translation was released for Undertale on PS4 and PS Vita, with a Nintendo Switch version following in 2018. Though it appeared that Undertale’s porting would come to an end with the release of the game’s sequel, Deltarune Chapter 1, in 2018, Microsoft unveiled a surprise trailer announcing that not only is Undertale coming to Xbox One and Xbox Series X today, March 16, but it will also be joining Xbox Game Pass and will have some exclusive content.
John Ricciardi of 8-4, one of the teams behind the game’s console ports, confirmed a shrine in the game exclusive to the Xbox versions of Undertale in a blog post published on Xbox Wire. Other specifics have not been announced, although they are teased hilariously in the announcement trailer.
Due to the Xbox version’s exclusive content, the Xbox edition is not compatible with the PC version available on the Microsoft Store, according to the Xbox Wire post. In addition, the trailer shows that Fangamer will release a physical version of the game in the future.
Undertale’s addition to Xbox Game Pass follows in the footsteps of Sega’s Yakuza series. Microsoft brought a favorite title formerly unavailable to Xbox players to the service for users to enjoy for the first time.
Microsoft has also increased its contribution to adding independent games to the web, with titles like 12 Minutes and The Good Life due to launch later this year, following the massive popularity of previous titles like Outer Wilds and Streets of Rage 4 since they first joined the service. Hopefully, 8-4 will follow up with a port of Deltarune Chapter 1 and more details on the game’s second chapter in the near future.
