Microsoft believes exclusive video games are a relic of the past, despite the fact the Nintendo Switch 2, with Mario Kart World, is now the fastest-selling console ever.
As seen with the ROG Xbox Ally X handheld, Microsoft is continuing to push the Xbox brand from one singular console to a multi-device platform.
A part of this shift is the company’s move into becoming a multi-platform publisher, between buying Call Of Duty developer Activision and putting Xbox-published games like Forza Horizon 5 and Gears Of War Reloaded onto rival consoles.
And now Xbox president Sarah Bond, fresh from talking about Microsoft’s next gen plans, has discussed the reasons behind this approach in an interview.
Asked by Mashable whether people can expect exclusive blockbuster games from Xbox in the future, Bond replied: ‘We’re really seeing people evolve way past that. The biggest games in the world are available everywhere.
‘You look at Call Of Duty, you look at Minecraft, you look at Fortnite, you look at Roblox, that’s actually what’s really driving community in gaming. That’s where people gather, they have experiences.
‘And the idea of locking it to one store or one device is antiquated for most people. You want to be able to play with your friends anywhere regardless of what they’re on, and we’re really leaning into that with this experience [ROG Xbox Ally X] because it just opens up another way for you to play. As does cloud, as does PC, as does the consoles we already have in our living room.’
Expert, exclusive gaming analysis
Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning.
Bond is right in saying many of the biggest games today are multi-platform, like Call Of Duty and Fortnite, but this view completely ignores the elephant in the room: the two companies with the highest-selling consoles today, Sony and Nintendo, owe much of their success to exclusive games.
The Nintendo Switch 2 has become the fastest-selling console ever, not because of Fortnite, but because of Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza. Sony might be porting many of its PlayStation 5 exclusives to PC, several months after their initial launch, but people buy that console because they know it’s where you can play Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and Ghost Of Yōtei first.
It’s very hard to imagine Xbox holding this stance if the cards were flipped. The reason this multi-platform pivot is happening is because the Xbox Series X/S (and the Xbox One before that) failed, and that was because it lacked any appealing exclusives.
Both Halo and Gears Of War have lost their cache, with Forza Horizon being one of the few franchises they have left that is in anyway as desirable as Sony first party titles such as God Of War and The Last Of Us.
In other words, exclusive games aren’t antiquated at large, they’re just antiquated for the current state of Xbox – a publisher who have bought Bethesda and Activision to cover up their losses elsewhere. Indeed, their original plan was to make all Bethesda games exclusives, until Microsoft realised the Xbox Series X/S was already too far gone.
Whether Xbox will find success without exclusives is the big question, as we get closer to the next generation. While we don’t know much officially about their plans, Bond recently described the next Xbox console (which is apparently still happening) as a ‘very premium’ product, implying it will be similar to a high-end PC.
Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter.
To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.
For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.
