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A new interview from Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has shed a little more light on its approach to exclusivity, even though the company still seems confused.
The back-and-forth with Bloomberg is actually a brilliant listen, with some genuinely hard hitting questions from journalist Emily Chang, who’d clearly done her research.
It digs into a number of topics about Microsoft and the industry at large; Sharma, for example, says that RAM prices have increased 50% since she took over from Microsoft lifer Phil Spencer earlier in the year. That’s an issue that affects everyone – including Sony and Nintendo.
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But I suppose the bit of most interest for PS5 owners is the topic of exclusivity. Chang goes hard, directly asking the executive’s stance on this topic – and whether Game Pass is ever going to achieve its goal of being a Netflix-style replacement for games.
Sharma’s answer doesn’t really reveal much, but I’ve transcribed it below for you:
“I think it's a tough topic. Look, we're the number two publisher in the world, and in order to be a great publisher, you must have your games reach large audiences to play. At the same time, we're increasingly becoming a platform. In order to be a platform, you must have exclusive content and services. And so, we're looking at that very closely. I think that we have to be very thoughtful about each title, on how we want to think about it, and learn from similar cases in the industry, and that's what we're doing.”
To be honest, I think you can read this in a number of different ways and come up with a dozen different conclusions.
She says throughout the interview that her remit is to make Xbox the number one gaming and entertainment company in the world, and I’m just not sure how she intends to do that without leaning into PS5 (and Switch 2’s) global audience. Time will tell.
Sharma’s stance is obviously different to her predecessors; former chief Sarah Bond had described exclusives as “antiquated”. It’s clear the company no longer feels that way.
But having spent the best part of $100 billion on multiformat publishers, I’m just not sure how Microsoft puts the genie back in the bottle.
Her comments seem to imply a “case-by-case” basis approach, but with franchises like Forza and Halo already committed to the PS5, is one game here or there really going to change the Redmond firm’s fortunes?
I think it’s going to be really fascinating to see what becomes of Gears of War: E-Day this week, because that’s one game Microsoft hasn’t committed to PS5 yet. Is that coming day-and-date, or is that going to be the title the company experiments with?
It felt like last year’s release of Gears of War Reloaded was designed to introduce PS5 owners to Marcus Fenix and the franchise at large.
Either way, we’re no closer to getting any concrete answers about the organisation’s strategy after this latest interview.