Footage has emerged that appears to show Kojima Productions' Death Stranding is apparently blocked from being played on Xbox via GeForce Now.
Death Stranding is a post-apocalyptic open-world game from Kojima Productions. Originally a PlayStation exclusive, the game is getting a Director's Cut on PS5 and has previously received PC-exclusive crossover content with Cyberpunk 2077. Now, a strange situation has developed -- it appears that Death Stranding is being blocked from loading on Xbox consoles through GeForce Now.
were you looking forward to playing Sony PC games on Xbox through Nvidia GeForce Now? I noticed something strange. You can't play Death Stranding, a Sony published game, on Xbox through GeForce Now. It's blocked from showing up in search results 🤔 pic.twitter.com/G5qkFOPIwH
— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) October 25, 2021
What's Going on with Death Stranding and GeForce Now on Xbox?
A tweet from The Verge's Senior Editor Tom Warren shows his attempt to find Death Stranding via GeForce Now search on Xbox. The game does not appear on the list at all, but it shows up just fine on PC.
"Were you looking forward to playing Sony PC games on Xbox through Nvidia GeForce Now?" read the tweet from Tom Warren. "I noticed something strange. You can't play Death Stranding, a Sony published game, on Xbox through GeForce Now. It's blocked from showing up in search results[.]"
"[The] weirdest part is that Sony doesn't publish Death Stranding on PC, only on console," he added in a reply. "That might not matter, though. If there's an agreement somewhere about cloud / console streaming exclusivity, then this could be why. I've asked Nvidia to comment[.]"
GeForce Now is a cloud gaming service that has amassed a healthy library of games and is continually adding new titles; for example, the popular beaver-based survival city-builder Timberborn is working on adding GeForce Now support. The appeal of the service is the ability to play any of these games on any of your compatible devices, but it appears that there may be some exclusions in place.
One important detail is noted on GeForce Now's list of games. Death Stranding is indeed on there, but the PlayStation version is not explicitly listed:
DEATH STRANDING (Epic)
DEATH STRANDING (Steam)
Notably, neither Xbox nor PlayStation are listed as platforms; the listed platforms are most commonly Steam or the Epic Games Store and the occasional entry from GOG or Ubisoft Connect. No PlayStation or Xbox consoles are listed as a platform for a GeForce Now game; Nintendo Switch, Android, and iOS are also not mentioned in the list.
Warren also revealed that copy/pasting the browser link from PC to the Xbox browser doesn't work, either. Strangely, a gamer in Russia reports that Death Stranding is playable on Xbox in that region which suggests that the lack of access to the title on Xbox may be dependent on the region.
Unfortunately, it's not quite clear what's going on here. It's possible that there is some kind of publishing agreement in place that prevents Death Stranding from being played on Xbox; it's also likely that this is a bug or an oversight. We've reached out to the involved companies for comment and will update this article when we receive a reply.
Would you want to play Death Stranding on Xbox? What's your favorite game in the GeForce Now catalog? Let us know in the comments below!
