Exclusives have become a thing of the past for the Xbox platform and unlike Sony who’ve recently limited the release of their single-player focused titles solely on their native platform, their main competitor Microsoft hasn’t been able to return to making at least some of their games exclusives to their own platform.
And one of the biggest reasons for Microsoft making many of their previously exclusive titles go multiplatform (including both Halo and Gears of War) is their deal of acquiring Activision Blizzard and the move for making those console-specific games launching on Sony’s platforms is in an attempt to make up some of the costs. So from that perspective, the end for Xbox’s exclusivity certainly makes a lot of sense, but it sure seems that the new Xbox CEO will be looking to make changes in this particular area too, at least perhaps in the near future.
In a recent interview with Bloomberg, CEO Asha Sharma has stated that they understand the vital role exclusives play in any platform and they’re trying to balance being a successful video game publisher while also building their own platform in newer ways.
“Look, we’re the number two publisher in the world and in order to be a great publisher, you must have your games reach large audiences to play,” said Sharma. “At the same time, we’re increasingly becoming a platform, and in order to become a platform, you must have exclusive content and services. And so we’re looking at that very closely. I think that we have to be very thoughtful about each title, on how we want to think about it, and learn from some similar cases in the industry, and that’s what we’re doing.”
Currently, all of the titles that were strictly Xbox exclusives once, are confirmed to be released on the Playstation 5 at some point–games like Halo: Campaign Evolved, Fable and possibly Gears of War: E-Day are all set to launch on their rival platform.
