Since becoming the new CEO of Xbox, Microsoft’s Asha Sharma has said that she’s looking to rebuild and possibly revitalize the Xbox brand among gamers worldwide which is great. She also intends to change the pricing of Xbox Game Pass as she has admitted in a recent statement that the current costs of various tiers in the subscription service are “too expensive” for a lot of players which indicates that she really wants to shift things around which may include many core elements of the brand.
However, one of the big ways Microsoft could change the Xbox ecosystem is going back to making a select few titles completely exclusive to the platform which is also the way Sony is reportedly headed with their recent move to not release any more single player games on the PC. And it seems that’s highly likely as the latest episode of the Xbox Two Podcast saw Windows Central’s Jez Corden stating that one of the big discussions that’s going on right now behind the scenes is regarding platform exclusivity in Xbox.
“You know how I said they were thinking about adjusting Game Pass?” Corden said. “There are very, very, very big discussions about the exclusivity stuff going on.”
“I think they do recognize the value. It’s just about what kind of company you want to be at the end of the day. Do you want to be an ecosystem company first, or do you want to be a publishing company first?”
And while Corden didn’t go into detail regarding those conversations, his words indicate there could be a major shift in the platform which will see Xbox making a return to exclusivity in the same vein as both Nintendo and Sony, who maintains some of their biggest releases to be strictly limited to their platform.
Whatever happens, it’d be real interesting to see which way the Xbox platform heads to in the near future.
