Xbox’s future with exclusivity may be conditional.
Xbox boss Asha Sharma recently spoke with Fortune about her first 100 days as head of Xbox and, naturally, the topic of exclusivity came up. Sharma’s response highlighted the importance of multi-platform titles as a leading publisher, but also made it clear that exclusives are important to building a platform. However, the most interesting part of her quote came at the end when she noted that Xbox isn’t “healthy” and that future exclusives will be determined by the health of the business.
“I think that we are the number two publisher in the world, and when you do that you want your games to be everywhere,” said Sharma. “You’re stronger when the world plays with you. At the same time, we’re increasingly becoming more of a platform, and it’s hard to find examples of platforms out there that don’t have exclusive services and content. And so this is a journey for us. Our business isn’t particularly healthy as you noted, and so we’re starting by introducing one to two signature exclusives and, as the business is healthy, we will look to try and do more.”
The two exclusives in question are Gears of War: E-Day, arriving this October, and 2027’s Clockwork Revolution. It was made abundantly clear that these are not timed-exclusive games, meaning there are zero plans to bring them to PlayStation later. However, Xbox also announced that first-party games like State of Decay 3 and Senua will be on PS5 when they release next year. These were games that weren’t previously publicly announced for PS5, like Halo: Campaign Evolved and Fable.
This has created some confusion among fans, particularly following the appearance of a PlayStation 5 logo on Gears of War: E-Day art that appeared on the official Xbox Podcast. The image was rapidly scrubbed from Xbox channels, but does appear to suggest the game was intended to arrive on PS5 at some point before a reversal in strategy. So, why wasn’t the same done for those games? It’s unclear, though fans have speculated that there’s a multitude of reasons, such as Hellblade having a fan base on PlayStation and State of Decay benefiting from a larger player base as a co-op series.
Nevertheless, it seems like Xbox is continuing to evaluate exclusivity on a case by case basis and is using these two games to test the waters for the strategy. Should they succeed, it sounds like Asha and her team at Xbox will move forward on making other games exclusive. However, it remains unclear what will happen if these games fail to make a splash. Will Xbox fully commit to multi-platform releases once more? Will it just be more selective, opting to make legacy franchises like Halo exclusive while pushing newer IP to all platforms? It sounds like we’ll have to wait and see. Xbox seems to be trying to figure out what the future looks like as it goes. As Asha Sharma once said herself, the plan is the plan until it’s not the plan.
Cade Onder is a freelancer for IGN’s news team. He covers all things entertainment, including gaming, film, and more. You can find him on Twitter @Cade_Onder.
