Despite what the April Fool's Day video may lead players to believe, Xbox won't be buying Steam anytime soon. Microsoft is known for unleashing its spending power with the Xbox and buying a lot of developers to add to its Xbox Game Studios portfolio. Since the launch of the Xbox One console in 2014, Microsoft has made significant acquisitions of developers such as Mojang Studios, Ninja Theory, Obsidian Entertainment, and Double Fine. It would then take it to the next level in the transition to the Xbox Series X/S generation, acquiring major standalone publishers such as Bethesda and Activision.
Steam, meanwhile, remains the largest PC gaming marketplace after 20 years on the market with more than 100 million monthly users. Valve releases thousands of games on it every year and remains incredibly popular despite competition from the Epic Games Store. Steam also helps its case with frequent game discounts, especially during its prominent seasonal sale periods. Valve has also expanded its reach with the release of the Steam Deck handheld in 2022, allowing players to enjoy their vast library of games on the go.
Xbox's new boss may be planning big changes to game subscription prices
Fresh leadership at the Xbox division is currently considering several options to update the brand's popular subscription model to attract fans.
Xbox Steam Acquisition Seeks Jumps in April Fool's Day Awakening
Pure Xbox reported on an April Fool's joke about Microsoft's potential acquisition of Steam. Initially, the prominent April Fool's joke was about a program called Xbox Game Pass Flex, a free version of Game Pass that essentially replaces the load time of Xbox games with full-blown ads. Despite being just an online prank, it seemed like a credible announcement considering the speculation about Xbox adding ads to Game Pass. Turns out, this was just one notable Xbox joke that popped up during April Fools.
Google Trends showed that the top six Xbox-related searches were related to the potential acquisition of Xbox by Steam. Apparently, the spike in searches is coming from a TikTok user named jacobweeby who posted a video claiming that Microsoft bought Steam for $10 billion. The video, which has garnered over 850,000 views and over 75,000 likes in less than 24 hours, mentions that Xbox plans to tie up with Steam and create a unified library across console and PC. Despite one of the video's hashtags listing it as a parody, commenters were very confident that the parody was real, which probably explains the spike in Google searches.
April Fool's Day is prime time for the gaming world to drop fake notifications on unsuspecting gamers around the world. As usual very popular titles like Overwatch and Fortnite have added April Fools Day content to their games this year. These pranks aren't limited to developers and publishers either, as fans and content creators with large followings will create fake news in the video game world. Jacobweeby's video is just that and not a legitimate indicator that Microsoft is closing in on a deal to acquire Steam.
Still, even if Xbox isn't planning a full-fledged acquisition of Valve's platform, it's fair to see why gamers would believe the news. Xbox has previously tried some Steam integration into Xbox platforms, to the point where the ROG Xbox Ally handheld is even compatible with it. Furthermore, current reports about Microsoft's upcoming Xbox console, Project Helix, suggest that it will be able to play Steam games out of the box. So while a proper Steam buyout probably isn't in Xbox's future, this April Fool's Day video might not be far from what Microsoft plans to offer next-gen.
