Table of Contents
Introduction
During the Xbox One generation of gaming, a phrase was born, the phrase “Xbox has no games” was made popular in gaming discourse. It is a phrase coined to highlight the fact that the Xbox console did not have enough blockbuster AAA exclusives. Xbox fans were left with three major AAA franchises, namely Halo, Gears and Forza.
These three franchises were all Xbox fans had to look forward to throughout most of the generation, and this is one of the biggest reasons people give for Xbox losing the generation. Things became so bad that Microsoft was seriously contemplating shutting down the Xbox division at one point, until Phil Spencer convinced Satya Nadella to do otherwise.
To remedy this problem Xbox decided to acquire content for their platform. In 2017 Xbox only had 6 studios and as at today in 2024, Xbox has acquired 8 studios, and bought 2 publishers bringing their total number of studios to over 35+ studios as of 2024. In fact, nothing demonstrates this better than this tweet from Xbox reporter Klobrille.
But now there seems to be a problem, despite the impressive collection of studios, the tide in the console war seems not to have changed as PlayStation seems to be outselling Xbox consoles, sometimes by a factor of 3:1 in some regions and this has led many to argue that Xbox should abandon console exclusives all together and put all of their games on PlayStation and possibly Nintendo.
I however think that is a bad idea and would lead to more losses for Xbox than any potential gains, and I think these arguments are borne from focusing only on console sales and failing to see the bigger picture. Here are some reasons I think getting rid of console exclusives will be a terrible idea for Xbox.
They already release games on more platforms.
Xbox already releases games day one on PC and is on the biggest PC storefront Steam, with 132 million monthly active users, a much larger user base than the PlayStation 5 with just 50 million users so far in the generation. Then we have handheld devices like the Steam Deck, Asus ROG Ally, etc. which are also in the millions. In addition to 1 billion cloud devices which can stream Xbox games (though I expect the attach rate to be very low here).
Taking Steam PC MAUs and Xbox consoles alone into consideration then Xbox games release to a minimum of 153 million potential customers, compared to a PlayStation exclusive like Spider-Man 2 which released on a console with only 50 million users.
So, Xbox games enjoy wider distribution as they have more potential players.
They could lose massive amounts of Money.
I think the signs show that Xbox would actually lose more money than they would gain by putting games on PlayStation. I recently did a poll on my twitter account asking if people would abandon Xbox consoles if Xbox released their exclusives on PlayStation, and only 50% of respondents said that they would remain. (While my poll has a small sample size, I still believe that this sentiment will be widely shared).
This means that Xbox would lose a massive amount of revenue from those consoles, revenue through services on the consoles, revenue from Game Pass, Xbox live, fees on 3rd party games etc. and all they would gain is some revenue from a few more copies sold on PlayStation.
When it is all said and done, Xbox might actually end up losing more money than what they end up making by releasing everything on PlayStation. Of course, this does not apply to games like Minecraft and Call of Duty as those games would be best served by reaching every single potential customer and were already multiplatform when they were acquired.
But overall Xbox still needs to keep some game exclusives, or they will lose more than they gain by making everything multiplatform.
Lose Game Pass users.
I saw an article which advocated for Xbox to release games on PlayStation and shift focus to Game Pass. But this will not work if Game Pass is not on PlayStation, because it would reduce the sales of a platform that Game Pass is on (Xbox consoles) and boost the sales of a platform that does not have Game Pass.
Conclusion
While Xbox might not sell as many consoles as PlayStation does, it is not a business in crisis as so many like to portray it to be. The addition of Activision Blizzard and Bethesda means that they likely now have a higher operating income than PlayStation and maybe even Nintendo. Of course, I might be wrong, and Xbox might choose to stop exclusives, but I do not think that is likely to happen at this moment.