Rumour: Xbox Debating Whether to Make Its Games Exclusive Again

Not a chance. Unlike Sony and their PC endeavours, Microsoft have made a fortune from putting Xbox games on Playstation. They are consistently in the top sellers.

I think it'd be silly of them to go exclusive again, surely the PS5 numbers speak for themselves! Maybe they'll go timed exclusive, like Forza 6?

This is of lower significance than it seems on first glance. Microsoft has several publishers, and if it wants to bring Forza Horizon 7 to PS6, it could use Bethesda Softworks, Activision Publishing, Blizzard Entertainment or even a third-party publisher to do this, no Xbox Game Studios needed.

@Max_the_German that's a very good shout, never thought of that 👍🏼

Lol I said this and people were insisting it's never going to happen because they're making money, MS can survive without that money.

Let it happen as they don't do anything that's an interest to me anyway, but I'd give it 5 years after the Helix has flopped and the games will be back on Playstation and Nintendo.

From a brand perspective it makes sense, but I think they have gone too far at the point but who knows Xbox have been moving strange this gen.

@UltimateOtaku91 I think Helix will fair better then the Steam machine, but it's way too early to say if anything will flop or not.

Hilarious! They’ve done so well on PlayStation. I predict they continue with multiplatform, but who knows what’s going to happen in this crazy, crazy world these days…

Jez Corden is such a MS fanboy that I guarantee this is bulls**t from him which is why at the end he leaves himself an out when this doesn’t amount to any change

@Oram77 I think it will sell much less than the Series consoles have, especially if the rumoured £1000+ price is real. It's a big gamble on their behalf to make games exclusive again, at most I can see their games maybe being 6-12 month timed exclusives.

@Oram77 lol helix is going to flop the Xbox brand is dead and completely toxic no one really cares about the hardware

Well... If this does happens, next gen will be the first gen i can actually afford both of them with my own earned grown up money.

I also think it depends on the games budget, games like Call of Duty and Elder Scrolls are definitely going to stay multiplatform no matter what happens.

@UltimateOtaku91 If you remember the PS6 may cost around the same (but again this is all speculations) do you think that will flop too?

@dark_knightmare2 Just for the record I have never owned an Xbox so I don't really have a horse in that race, all I saying is the Helix will have a core player base.... how big that will be? I have no idea.

I think they should, if Sony et al aren't going to be doing it then Microsoft probably shouldn't. It's understandable this generation as their current Xbox is a bit of a write off. They could make a come back, especially with the volatility in the hardware market, if they navigate contrary to the rumours and release something substantial to compete at a lower price point next generation. Microsoft has the capital to write the ship if they're motivated enough.

They should do it if they want to sell Xbox 1080 or whatev the name. I'm sure Fallout 5, Elder Scroll 6, COD 50, Forza, Gears, Halo, Fable etc could be a system seller for them.

I personally don't care since none of MS lineup interest me. But i think this is a good opportunity for some people in here who showed their disdain towards Sony / PS and said that next generation they gonna abandon Playstation and go full PC or Xbox.

That ship has sailed, they simply don't not have the user base anymore and Helix will not be(and probably isn't intended to be) a big seller, so I don't see them having anywhere near the numbers required to make that a viable business plan

@Oram77 at £1000 most definitely compared to PS5 sales. I believe there is a limit to what a customer is willing to pay and at that price that's over the limit of most. Just look at the Pro sales, they have tanked at their new price.

If anything the new Xbox Helix will have competition from Sony as usual but this time round there's also Steam with a PC console that they could lose their players to as well.

Its going to be an interesting next gen between Playstation, Xbox and Steam and it could just come down to who doesn't break the £1000 mark. Even the Lenovo Legion Go 2 2TB just doubled in price to nearly $3000.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/lenovo-hikes-legion-go-2-handheld-gaming-pc-to-almost-3-000-for-2-tb-model-was-1-480-at-launch.1489234/

Gaming is going to become a very expensive hobby that will price many out, and people will just stick to the previous gen.

if anything a more realistic thing that would happen would be xbox gets the game first and a few months later its on playstation. so if you want to play it now it would still give xbox the one up.

@TheArt except fhe reason they started releasing on PS5 is because they're not making enough money from software sales...... Surely that's obvious by now.....?

The only way this would work, is if they ditch the gamepass as not many buy games

The reason they went multi platform is because their console sales tanked. That hasn’t changed. Why go exclusive again?

I guess they could do it to make one last big push with a new console, but otherwise it's totally pointless.

I assumed Microsoft was ready to get out of the hardware business asap and that even the rumored next-gen Xbox was just inertia from R&D that began years ago. I'll be surprised if they invest a lot in consoles again.

@Oram77 personally the price is fine, getting a comparable pc cost 2-3 times 1k. The Cost of technology has went significantly, since its no longer standard hard drives but nvmes, . Can put away £50-100 a month as its not out for at least
Another 1-2 years

What a mess both Xbox and PlayStation seem to have got themselves in on the first-party front…

It makes zero business sense. It didn't work for them during the Xbox One generation when they had a huge base to build on from the 360 gen, it failed spectacularly in the following gen due to the failures of the previous one and now they want to try again when they have virtually no base left? You can't release exclusives on a dead platform.

@Angelus3K "Cat's out of bag" is stupidest argument ever. And even I don't think that Microsoft would make exclusives again.

But just because you made 20 ports of your games for PlayStation 5 doesn't mean in any shape or form that they are obliged to make more ports. They just can say "we are stopping this *****" and have balls to do that exactly like Sony is doing with their PC ports (but on bigger scale). There is no contract (outside of COD) in place that obliges Microsoft to make more ports.

Same person (Jez) also said that Microsoft lifted their profit margins mandate (which was 30%) from shoulders of Xbox division after Sharma was made CEO. So there is actually wiggle room to stop porting their games on PlayStation in terms of potential revenue hit.

@Oram77 I don't think there is a chance that the consoles will cost the same at all. The helix is being pegged as a super powerful hybrid PC / Console that will need to be a higher spec just by the nature of the device.

I think the only reason there is speculation about the same price is because people are using the original Helix estimates pre the Ai shortages, and the new PS6 estimates post shortages. Its also ignoring that Sony have the better buying power due to greater sales, and can subsidise better due to a singular storefront.

Where ever the PS6 lands on price I think you can add another $200 - $300 minimum for the entry point of the Helix. Likely more if they want it to be as powerful as they have been suggesting.

If jez is reporting it there’s more than likely nothing to it. I can’t count how many times he’s been wrong about most things

Maybe Microsoft will take PlayStation's example and only release live-service multiplayer games on PlayStation going forward? 🤷🏼

Apart from Forza Horizon 5 and Sea of Thieves, none of the Microsoft published games sold exceptionally well on PlayStation.

But personally I don't like this trend of going back to exclusives. There was this sense that PlayStation and Xbox would open up and release their games on more platforms, making those games more accessible, ending all the pointless "console war" debates. But now it seems like things are going back to how they were before - except now everything is more expensive.

If they change tactics and start making them exclusive again in strengthens the Xbox console brand but will likely weaken them overall.

They made their bad sh*t in it with gamepass, made it a second time pi**ing off Xbox owners now possibly want to U-turn?

Just makes them look clueless to me

The play here is only Forza and Sea of Thieves sold well on PS and those were old titles. Mostly everything else didn’t sell that much, so for that little of money it’s better to keep it to the Xbox and PC platform and hope someone plays them on windows. You can always bring them to PS years and years later. I don’t know if that is the best move or not. There is some Pro’s and Con’s to it like anything else. But 34 million Xbox’s alongside PC is not a dead platform. There is a lot of money there still. But i like more games on more platforms for us all to play. I own all 3 consoles so i got little reason to worry. But i like other gamers able to play games with me when they don’t own the box i do. I am torn on this but i see both sides of the coin. Time will tell and if it does happen well everyone always say’s you need exclusives to sell for brand identity.but if they keep Elder Scrolls 6 for 3-4 years i am sure there will be people complaining on this site that MS is blocking them from playing games.

My guess is they will stop day 1 releases and then see how it goes in the long run. Games like Hellblade and South of Midnight for instance will still get ported but maybe Gears E-Day won't see PS. I suppose this summer will reveal all with their showcase.

I don’t think Sony or the fans care that much. No one is buying an Xbox for any of their games. Outside of Forza, I can’t say anything Xbox coming to PS has even mattered. Sure, we will buy the games if they come. But no one is falling all over themselves to do it. Fable won’t do numbers. Bethesda is a shell of itself. COD will always be multi platform — especially with its dwindling numbers. Xbox has no leverage.

Console exclusive or platform exclusive?
Console exclusive makes sense, Xbox/PC release type deal.
Platform exclusive? Maybe for some titles, and only as a timed exclusive.

@madmaxrules how the hell is PS in trouble on the first party front? They’ve had a string of poor live service endeavors, but the PS ecosystem is still as strong as ever.

Not gonna happen. They originally wanted to keep everything for themselves, but it’s cost prohibitive. And Microsoft will never allow it, now that they’ve seen the money they make by releasing on PS5.

@HerlockSholmes Not really? Take a look at most of the games that Microsoft has released on PS5 so far, and you'll see that most of them haven't exactly made "fortunes" on the platform.

As Dusk Falls, Pentiment, Hi-Fi Rush, Age of Empires 4, Age of Mythology: Retold, Hellblade 2, Avowed, South of Midnight, Doom: The Dark Ages, Gears of War: Reloaded, Ninja Gaiden 4, The Outer Worlds 2, and Towerborne all sold only okay at best on PlayStation. They weren't consistently in the top sellers on PlayStation as you're suggesting.

The only Microsoft games that have done pretty well on PlayStation are the live service games, like Forza Horizon 5, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, Sea of Thieves, and Age of Empires 2, along with the occasional singleplayer game such as Indiana Jones, Grounded, and (maybe) Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4.

Sony made a fortune from Helldivers 2 on PC, to the point that it sold more on Steam at launch than on PlayStation. That hasn't stopped Sony from pulling back on PC ports for first-party singleplayer titles, however. Likewise, just because a couple of Xbox games have done really well on PlayStation, doesn't mean Microsoft can't walk back their multiplatform strategy for some of their singleplayer titles.

I honestly would not be bothered one way or another. The only 2 games I bought that were Microsoft games were Sea of Thieves and Gears of War. Although I am a huge Forza fan, I preferred the 4th entry, so I passed on the 5th. Everything else hasn’t appealed to me. I think that if they go back to exclusives, it won’t help them at all really. Bethesda seems incapable of releasing a working game so they won’t be a huge miss either. Microsoft are in a lose lose situation, they stop making games available to PlayStations, they will lose out on the money available to them. Keep releasing and they will devalue the Xbox brand until it’s no longer worth the effort releasing systems. The damage for them has been done.

@johncalmc A) That's because Xbox didn't have many first-party games to begin with, when they were still exclusive. And most of them weren't particularly great, they didn't have a single system seller in the last decade. Microsoft is now actually releasing quality games on a regular basis, thanks to their acquisitions, but they're all multiplatform. B) Well, Sony is doing the same thing with PC, so why can't Xbox? Sony has put all of their major franchises, sans Gran Turismo, on PC, and they're still going to put live service titles and second-party singleplayer titles on the platform. How, then, can PC players trust Sony to stick to their word and not start putting their tentpole exclusives on PC again five years from now? Don't you think, instead of buying a PS5/6, a lot of these people will just wait for Ghost of Yotei, Intergalactic, Wolverine, etc. to come to PC again, despite the rumors suggesting otherwise?

I can see a future that has a mixture of exclusive, timed exculive and day one 3rd party stuff to work best.

Activision and multiplayer games are day one 3rd party

Maybe Forza, which is a hybrid, could be timed exclusive

Then, single-player games across XGS and Bethesda can be either exclusive or timed exclusive.

Remember that porting games to PS5 costs time and money.

For something like Forza 6 and Fable, it makes sense. But for games like Avowed and MS Flight Sim 24, The Outer Worlds 2 (which sold under 500K copies on PS5), it wasn't worth the time and effort. Out of all the games ported, only 2 have broken the 1 million sales record (Oblivion remaster and Forza 5).

The porting experiment has been a mixed bag at best and hardly a "leaving all that money on the table" situation.

Not a chance. Satya Nadella is definitely all-in on the multiplatform move. It’s a profit-driven play; the PS5 user base is just too big to leave on the table.

If they want to move back to exclusives (which I doubt they will, but it's clear that they are evaluating) they need to do that right now.

Because this year IS the year to do it. It would be hilarious (and on brand for Xbox) to blow their biggest load of high-profile first-party (and potentially system sellers) games in years - Forza Horizon 6, Fable, Gears of War E-Day and Halo Remake and release them everywhere just to later switch back to exclusives lol.

@Oram77
I don't think PS6 will sell as well as PS5 due to its price, but it will sell OK, whereas Xbox's Helix will (at least in my opinion) sell very little at its even higher price.

Too many people have been 'burned' by Xbox this gen, what with their GP price rises, and shall we say 'fluidity' on their stance on exclusives. Whilst some criticise Sony, Xbox's name is in the mud.
I also think Helix being (if rumours are true) a PC in a box, is going to put off some current console only players, as it will come with a lot of that PC baggage.

Next gen, cross gen will become more important than ever, with those that can't or won't afford a PS6 staying with their PS5, at least to begin with.

All in all Sony's userbase / market share may (significantly) expand in the beginning - even if PS6 isn't a massive hit at the price.

Its going to be a weird gen.
I have said PS5/Pro will be PS6's biggest competition for a while - but how much of a long term problem this proves for Sony (if at all), will depend on how capable the hardware actually is.

I really do think that Xbox will keep putting their games on PS though, even if they flip flop a time or two, as they will need to due to market share.

@RyPal It’s been sad to see the number of studios they’ve closed in recent years. It feels like some things haven’t gone the way Sony had planned or intended. Hopefully no more closures, though!

Let them do it. It would certainly be hilarious to backtrack after making moralising statements about wanting their games to reach as wide an audience as possible.

The only thing that makes me think they might consider this and make a strong play, absorbing some financial impact, is if they think it’ll sell more of Helix and this is what they want as a way to put more of their AI software into homes.

If MS are going to push AI hard then, as the article says, they need a way to do this in the home as well as the office, and Helix would seem like a perfect way to do that.

Them going exclusive again wouldn’t move the needle for me, if anything I’m more likely to buy a Steam Machine and play the MS games on that.

@Questionable_Duck Tbf I don't get why people expected Xbox games to do well on Playstation, if Playstation gamers wanted to play these IP's then they would have bought an Xbox at some point over the last 4 gens to play them. Just because they are all of a sudden coming to Playstation consoles doesnt mean people are going to be more interested, hence why Gears of War Reloaded didn't take off.

The games that will do well are the ones from Activision and Bethesda, whereas the original Xbox studio games are probably better off staying exclusive.

Wouldn’t affect me much at all, like others have said in these comment sections when this discussion came up with Sony/Playstation in the headline, I go where the games are. I wouldn’t dare get caught port begging, after all it’s annoying when others do it for PS games.

Whatever Microsoft decides to do I hope it’s for the benefit of Xbox because there needs to be competition

@UltimateOtaku91 I agree, a lot of these games weren't exactly the types of stuff that people would have bought an Xbox for to begin with, so it makes sense that they're not selling crazy well on PS5.

If there's one thing that Sony has continuously had an advantage over compared to Xbox, it's system-selling games. Ghost of Yotei, Intergalactic, and Wolverine are the types of games that can sell consoles on their own. Pentiment, Gears of War: Reloaded, The Outer Worlds 2, Avowed, South of Midnight, etc.? Not so much.

If MS stops doing multiplatform releases, i won't care enough about it to get their next Xbox or buy the games on PC. I'll definitely miss Gears, but this game isn't enough to make me buy another Xbox, especially now that they'll make the next one expensive as hell. I'll stick to Playstation next gen

The multi platform strategy is way too profitable for them to abandon imo. Xbox (the console) is a lot like sega back in the day.

There are not going exclusive. Now if Microsoft sold Xboxs like the PS5 that would be a different matter, the fact their hardware sales are in the toilet is what got they here in the first place. And we are meant to believe Microsoft are now ready to eat them costs?

@TheArt they can survive without the money but what sort of business model is that?

If they see it makes them a lot more money (bigger profits) they aren't going to pass that up.

They are a mega corporation, they don't want a lot of money they want all the money

It makes no sense for them in a business point of virw dor two reasons. If you said at this point in time they would reverse it, it would only make sense, as long as they sell the games to xbox series users and pc users and not put them on game pass day one. Thus having two avenues of money coming in, but then they would lose game pass subscriptions.
The second reason is if this ties in with helix, they would again need to remove from gamepass, however there is only one revenue stream, as helix is a pc so no console sales. Now take into account as well for pc, they either make then only available by Windows store, otherwise they lose up to a further 30% revenue selling on other stores like steam and epic.
Also helix is going to be very premium, you will get even less user base than series has now.

Honestly, not many of their first party games have interested me all that much. That said, I am really curious about Fable. And I plan to try Hellblade 2 and Indiana Jones sometime later down the road, just not a high priority right now.

@HerlockSholmes xbox wants to go back to selling 60.000 copies again.

If this comes to pass Microsoft is sealing Xbox's fate for real

So after years of boasting about being pro-consumer with the multiplatform releases, are they going to come out and say "well actually now we are anti-consumer"?

Deciding to go back to not selling copies of their games is certainly a choice.

I do wonder, if Microsoft truly goes so far to make their games Xbox exclusive again, will we get more articles about "port begging " here? Those articles seem to be quite popular with the fans. /sarcasm

Do it. So buying whatever the next Xbox becomes is actually compelling. Keep the traditional IPs that were multi plat that were bought the same. Increase the cost of windows and other MS subscriptions by 0.02$ each calendar year. A lot of money will still be made by the corporation.

The thing is xbox has struggled to compete with Playstation over 4 generations with only the 360 coming close. However since then they've bought a massive amount of developers and IP and it puts them in a position to genuinely compete with Sony.

Not only that buy Gamepass clearly isn't the cash cow they thought it'd be but they have the output to make xbox desirable if they go exclusive. Whether additional sales made from doing that would cover and exceed sales lost from playstation who knows but they're probably the numbers MS is looking at.

The Xbox brand is all over the place. They don’t know whether they’re coming or going. They’re so far out there, they’re on their way back.

Only way I’ll allow this is if they resurrect that perfect dark project.

File this under believe it when I see it. Just logically, it doesn’t make sense to me. Phil just got replaced, and I’m pretty sure he was one of the biggest supporters of keeping games exclusive. So even if the new head is big on exclusivity, that still nets out as no change. It doesn’t seem like the people who pushed for multi platform are gone, so there would have to be a reversal of opinion from some high ranking execs. Or maybe they just listen to the new Xbox head more lol. Neither is impossible, but I‘ll remain skeptical until there’s more evidence.

I say only this,do it. Competition breeds excellence.

As long as we get Forza, they can keep the rest

What is there to discuss? It would take multiple generations of comfortably outperforming PlayStation consoles (which doesn't seem likely, does it?) before exclusivity would justify the money they would leave on the table by pulling their games off of Sony and Nintendo platforms.

As the kids like to say "the cat is out of the bag."

@Max_the_German While they could do that, what would be the point? Playground are an Xbox Games Studios studio. Even if they technically have Bethwsda "publish" it rather than XGS... all that changes is a title screen logo.

I'm not saying they'll they won't and should keep putting some games on PS, because they will, but I just think that won't be the avenue they take.

Chances are, XGS games will shift back more towards timed exclusivity. Quote possibly significant periods of it rather than just 6 months or so. Bethesda games, will be a game by game basis situation as they already are. ABK games will just stay fully multiplatform. That would be my guess for what they do in the short run

Here’s to watching Microsoft screw up another chance to make money.

As same idiocy as in shops where they don't have large size shoes because they immediately sell out... and they just don't produce or restock more...