Baffling Xbox First Party Shift is a Ridiculous Gambit

gamesreviews.com:

Xbox look set to release all of their games onto PlayStation and Nintendo consoles, and in the very near future. And despite a large amount of theorising, that’s about all we know. But that is bad enough.

This is very much a breaking news story, and I held off writing anything in the hopes that Microsoft were sensible enough to put out an official statement overnight. But it hasn’t happened. A variety of leakers and insiders have confirmed separately that a variety of Xbox games will be coming to other consoles, starting with HiFi Rush. Starfield, Sea of Thieves and Indiana Jones will likely be jumping ship in the coming year.

There have been a lot of emotive responses to this, and it’s easy to see why. When you back the underdog for generations, you don’t expect them to roll over the second things are looking good. More than that, you don’t expect the narrative to come out from journalists who have their own negative reactions to this news. Microsoft have stuck to their silence. Hopefully by the time you’re reading this, that has changed.

Here’s the simple explanation: Xbox hopes there’s more money in releasing games full price everywhere – a kind of timed exclusive situation – than in keeping things exclusive. It’s hard to argue with that. The Last of Us would sell more if it released on Xbox and Nintendo consoles too. It’d sell more if it was on PC day one.

So why isn’t it?

Exclusives suck, but they set the tone for your console. Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 have almost identical catalogues, with a few variants. And the simple fact is that people default to PlayStation because over generations that is what they’ve had. They know the characters. They know the style.

By foregoing exclusives, or by going with a ridiculous timed exclusivity, Microsoft might make more money in the short term. But what damage are they doing to their console brand? Some will scoff at that, but they’re still selling tens of millions of devices, with people spending tens of billions