Is Xbox's future brighter without Activision? | Opinion

gamesindustry.biz:

Over the past year or so, a note of discord has crept into the generally enthusiastic response to Microsoft's current console strategy. Game Pass has been beloved, Xbox Series X is a superb piece of console hardware, Series S is an unprecedented marvel in terms of bang-for-buck performance, and from Phil Spencer down, the company's execs and spokespeople have perfected the art of making all the right noises to make game consumers feel good about the platform.

There's just one wrinkle; it's become harder and harder to ignore the lack of first-party exclusives.

The impressive backwards compatibility of the new systems, and the back catalogue Game Pass provides, were great stopgaps in the early days before new software arrived – speaking personally, my Series X got far more play than my PS5 in the first year or so for precisely that reason. But as Sony's first-party engine has spun up to speed, the continued reliance on that stopgap and on multiplatform titles has become a significant problem.

There's nothing new or controversial in this take – it's a sentiment that's been expressed regularly in recent months, all the more so in the past week following the UK CMA's decision to block Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, which had been the great white hope for resolving Xbox' software pipeline problems.

The concerns about how Xbox can tackle the challenges it now faces have only been intensified by the disappointing reception for Redfall, the first Xbox exclusive title by storied Bethesda studio Arkane and one of the games upon which this year's hopes for Xbox had been pinned (alongside the admittedly far more high profile Starfield). The Xbox bench just isn't deep enough to allow for swings to miss at this