Summary

• Xbox may be planning to bring its major first-party titles to competing platforms like PlayStation 5 and the Nintendo Switch successor.
• This new approach deviates from the traditional strategy of console exclusivity and instead focuses on increasing sales of games overall.
• Xbox's potential shift towards multi-platform releases could go beyond promises made by Microsoft in its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, which promised to keep only Call of Duty multi-platform for at least another decade.

Exclusive titles have always been a valuable tool in the perennial console war, and Xbox has long been ed by an array of games that can't be found on competing platforms. Much of the momentum that the original Xbox was able to gain against the juggernaut of the PlayStation 2 was thanks to Halo: Combat Evolved, which stood out as an exceptionally strong exclusive with forward-thinking gameplay, an impressive campaign, and iconography that holds up today. Despite how far this strategy carried Xbox, however, it looks like the company might be turning away from it in a major way.

The recent track record of Xbox exclusives has been a little more complicated than it once was, in part thanks to the continual growth of the PC market. Xbox console exclusives are generally playable on PC on the same release day, which makes some sense considering that both platforms fall under the Microsoft umbrella. Xbox has also been a bigger proponent of crossplay than PlayStation, a step away from the battle lines drawn between consoles. At the same time, Microsoft has been acquiring game studios left and right, building up a burgeoning library of console exclusives after a comparative dry spell in the earlier days of the Xbox One.

Xbox May Be Bringing Major Titles To PS5 & Switch 2

As reported by Twisted Voxel, current buzz indicates that Xbox is looking to bring a number of major first-party titles to the competing platforms of the PlayStation 5 and the Nintendo Switch successor. An insider going by the name of SneakersSO on NeoGAF is one significant source of information on this topic, delivering the message to "stay tuned!" regarding Xbox publishing titles on PlayStation and Nintendo platforms and mentioning current work on ports of several high-profile titles in another thread. WindowsCentral suggests that there's at least some legitimate backing to these rumors, although concrete details are still lacking.

Although it's not yet possible to know every game that Xbox might be planning ports for, SneakersSO does provide some specific names elsewhere on NeoGAF. One electrifying rhythm action game Hi-Fi Rush, and another post in the same thread name-drops Starfield, which would be a huge title to take multi-platform. Although the game was met with a more heavily divisive fan response than Bethesda Game Studios titles like The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim and Fallout 4, having an ambitious Bethesda title as an exclusive was a huge bargaining chip for Xbox. SneakersSO mentions that Xbox will eventually switch to multi-platform releases at launch, although this definitely feels like it ventures into speculative territory.

Taking any of Xbox's major first-party exclusives to other platforms would represent a markedly different approach from PlayStation or Nintendo, as both of Xbox's big competitors are still placing a major focus on drawing s with strong catalog entries. Nintendo has always kept huge IPs like Mario, Zelda, and Pokémon off of rival platforms, and PlayStation has drip-fed PC releases of franchises like Horizon, God of War, and Spider-Man but focused on maintaining console exclusivity. Xbox's apparent new tack would make it harder to maintain its corner of the console market in exchange for increasing sales of games overall.

Sony's strategy for releasing PC games also maintains long gaps between initial PlayStation releases and PC ports, and titles like The Last of Us Part 2 and God of War Ragnarök haven't yet appeared on Steam.

Microsoft's Activision Blizzard Purchase Has Rules

This isn't the first time that Xbox exclusivity has been in the news in recent months, as Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard made the concept a big talking point. Federal Trade Commission hearings probed anti-trust concerns regarding the purchase, as the company behind a major platform and a host of studios buying a company as large as Activision Blizzard is a significant industry consolidation. One commitment that Microsoft made during the hearings was multi-platform releases for Call of Duty over the next decade, ensuring that Xbox won't be leveraging the enormous franchise against competitors.

If the current rumors are substantiated, it seems that Xbox is willing to push this approach of its own accord, as the FTC's stipulations didn't extend to Hi-Fi Rush and other exclusives that Microsoft already owned. This should be good news for fans of Activision Blizzard titles and other recent Microsoft acquisitions, as it's unlikely that the company would seek to bring some games to other consoles while making others exclusives for the first time. Whether this is the result of chasing an internally consistent response to FTC demands or an entirely separate initiative, Xbox seems like it's becoming more of a game company and less of a console one.

Xbox May Have Already Lost The Console Wars

Although Xbox still has a strong market share, things have shifted heavily since the original Xbox usurped the GameCube and the Xbox 360 nearly matched sales against the PS3 – the PlayStation 5 is ultimately outselling the Xbox Series X/S by a fairly significant margin. In an interview with disastrous launch of Xbox exclusive Redfall, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer itted that the company "lost the worst generation to lose in the Xbox One generation" and reiterated that Xbox isn't trying to win any console wars. That doesn't mean that Xbox is giving up on hardware by any means, but it doesn't seem desperate to claim a majority of the market anymore.

The most obvious precedent for a console company transitioning to a software focus is SEGA, which once pushed platforms like the Genesis as superior to Nintendo competitors by building up the star power of Sonic the Hedgehog and other exclusives. After a number of market conditions and poor choices translated to poor sales for the technologically strong Dreamcast system, however, SEGA pulled back from console development. The company's games remain successful in the market today, but release on the platforms of former competitors instead of proprietary hardware.

There's no reason to believe that any move so extreme is in Xbox's future, but it does show the permanent value of holding a game library that can be popular across platforms. Although exclusives can help drive competition in a healthy way, it's also nice for the consumer to have more options for availability, and titles from under Microsoft's umbrella coming to other platforms is something to generally celebrate. If Xbox is indeed bringing major exclusives to other platforms, it's a huge shake-up for the industry that could help put great games into more hands than ever.

Sources: TwistedVoxel, SneakersSO/NeoGAF (1, 2, 3, 4), WindowsCentral, Kinda Funny Games/YouTube