Starfield

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There are a whole lot of reports circulating right now about what Xbox may be planning to change under its new CEO, Asha Sharma, who replaced Phil Spencer in February. An internal email revealed she believes Game Pass is “too expensive,” which seems like a logical conclusion after a 50% price hike last year to $30 a month.

Now, there are rumblings (via Jez Corden) that Xbox is rethinking its strategy on exclusives, where now they are offering practically all of its old and new games to rivals like PlayStation, not just doing cross-releases on PC as they have for a while. That includes very high-profile titles like this fall’s Fable, which will launch day one on that console.

You can see the argument for the necessity of this. Part of Sharma’s initial statement when she arrived was to refocus on Xbox core gamers, and those gamers feel like Xbox has lost its identity, where almost every game it makes is now also on a rival system. What’s the point of being an Xbox loyalist? Just getting those games on Game Pass, which now costs $360 a year?

Sharma also reiterated that hardware is important to the future of Xbox, doubling down on that concept after two underperforming console generations. “Project Helix” marketing is now spooling up, something that is expected to be some sort of console/PC hybrid. But if you’re asking people to buy an Xbox, and likely a pricey one, over a more-used PS5/6, you better have a good reason. And a big reason for picking one console over another has always been that it is the only place you can play first-party games. Xbox has lost that almost entirely now.

But this is more complicated than it sounds. You can’t just flip this switch without understanding the deeper context. Such as:

• Microsoft’s slate of Activision games after its enormous purchase of the publisher mostly cannot become exclusive. Call of Duty probably never can, given what they promised the courts and how many sales they would lose. Active game populations for Blizzard titles like Diablo or Overwatch are not going to suddenly be cut off. So that’s a pretty large chunk of first-party right there.
• Second, you’re just flat-out losing game revenue. PlayStation is outselling Xbox by anywhere from 2:1 to 4:1 at this point, most likely. All these first-party games are on Game Pass. So by default, you are moving way more copies of these games at full price by putting them on PlayStation. That money then evaporates and has to be replaced by…what? Even more Game Pass subscriptions, which are curremtly banging against a ceiling?
• Finally, this has to be a firm commitment. Microsoft cannot pick and choose which games are or are not going to be exclusive outside of the ones that have already been given away. Players cannot be forced to guess whether a game is a true exclusive, exclusive for months or exclusive for years. This is how things were at the beginning of this plan, back when Phil Spencer was saying that only four games were going multiplatform. Now, a few years later, it is quite literally almost everything. If you’re going back to exclusives, you have to go all the way back. No half-measures, or the whole idea goes back to being muddled and almost worse.

It is a difficult problem to solve, but every new Xbox game coming to PlayStation has always felt antithetical to pleasing a fanbase and pushing hardware. But unless Xbox wants to become a third-party publisher that occasionally moves a few consoles, it needs to make changes like this.

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