How Xbox Is Changing the Nature of Exclusivity

ign.com:

Last week, the Xbox community was sent into a tizzy over rumors that Xbox exclusives Hi-Fi Rush and Sea of Thieves might soon be exclusive no more.

The rumors remain unproven, but an imminent Xbox Developer Direct has given these reports extra weight. And beneath Xbox console fans’ outcry over the potential loss of more exclusives to other consoles, there is an interesting question rising from the dust of the console war battlefield. For the last console generation, Xbox has been pursuing a markedly different strategy to its competitors: while Nintendo and Sony were busy selling tens of millions of console units on the power of first-party exclusives, Xbox has been trying to build an ecosystem of software that transcends a single box under the TV. Gaming for everyone, Xbox games on every platform where people are playing. Sounds nice, right?

With the Activision Blizzard deal now done and Xbox squarely behind both Sony and Nintendo in terms of console sales this generation, all eyes are on Xbox to do something astonishing that will turn the tide in its favor and maybe transform the industry in the process. What will the trick be? Multiple massive blockbuster first-party releases? Finally making cloud gaming something people actually want to do? Releasing Game Pass on Switch?

Okay, it’s unlikely Xbox has some big 3D chess move prepared this year, and certainly not in time for the Developer Direct. But conversations with a number of industry analysts have convinced me that 2024 is the year we finally start seeing Xbox’s grand ecosystem strategy - and all it entails for exclusivity, multiplatform play, and cloud gaming - finally start to take shape.

Xbox has publicly been on the “ecosystem” train since before the current console generation. Way back in 2018, Spencer said at a Barclays conference that Xbox Game Pass was the future, and that future was going to be on “every device.”

"We use the flywheel that we have with customers on an Xbox to start the growth in Xbox Game