{"id":945680,"date":"2026-07-19T15:50:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-19T15:50:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/945680\/"},"modified":"2026-07-19T15:50:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-19T15:50:15","slug":"xbox-champions-exclusives-as-it-explains-confusing-reversal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/945680\/","title":{"rendered":"Xbox Champions Exclusives As It Explains Confusing Reversal"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple of years ago, Microsoft started making most of its first-party games multiplatform. Now it\u2019s taking some of those games and making them Xbox exclusives again. The whiplash between those two moves<\/a> in only 24 months has left many fans confused and skeptical about just how committed the tech giant will stay to this latest shift in policy. Xbox is adamant that it\u2019s not just a temporary experiment.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can assure you, Gears of War: E-Day and Clockwork Revolution are not the only titles we\u2019re planning,\u201d Xbox chief strategist recently told GamesRadar<\/a>. \u201cTo grow a platform like ours, you have to have exclusive games and services. These are not going to be the only two titles.\u201d He added that those games are never coming to PS5. They \u201care not timed exclusives but permanent ones,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

What will new Xbox exclusive number three be? While Ball reaffirmed that Microsoft will still make large live service multiplayer games multiplatform going forward to reach as many players as possible, that doesn\u2019t mean non-multiplayer games will automatically be exclusive. \u201cWe have a framework for these selections, including how we evaluate them,\u201d Ball said. \u201cI recognize that this approach is not obvious to all of our players, and we are committed to making this clearer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chief content officer Matt Booty tried to elaborate. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t overly fixate on single-player,\u201d he said. \u201cI think that\u2019s a good rule of thumb, but it certainly isn\u2019t something that\u2019s carved in stone.\u201d Booty added, \u201cWe are the stewards of over 20 game franchises that have made a billion dollars in their lifetime. There are a lot of different games in our portfolio, and we have to think about how different games serve different purposes within it.\u201d<\/p>\n

It sounds a lot like \u201cthe plan\u2019s the plan until it\u2019s not the plan<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Single-player games like Halo: Campaign Evolved and Fable are still coming to PS5, the latter of which doesn\u2019t arrive until early 2027, at the end of new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma\u2019s first year. What\u2019s the deal there? \u201cWe have titles where we have made a commitment to our partners and to our players that they were going to be multiplatform,\u201d Ball said. \u201cWe will be respecting this commitment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Booty added, \u201cWhile we\u2019re looking to be nimble, and it\u2019s fantastic to have the energy that\u2019s come with Asha\u2019s new leadership, we\u2019ve also got projects that have been in the works for a long time. We have to hit the right balance between the work that the teams have invested and a strategy pivot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Xbox\u2019s new line about needing exclusives to give players a reason to own an Xbox<\/a> is hard to argue with. But it also spent multiple console generations losing ground with a full slate of exclusive first-party games. It\u2019s still unclear how a trickle of exclusive games per year will succeed in reversing that trend when a boatload of them could not. It also limits the audience for those chosen first-party games at a time when Xbox studios are facing mass layoffs for releases and franchises that underperformed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe number of players we can reach across PlayStation and Nintendo is absurd, so is\u00a0now really the time to pull games away from those platforms?\u201d one anonymous source within Xbox told GamesRadar<\/a>. \u201cI hope it works, but I\u2019m unconvinced.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A couple of years ago, Microsoft started making most of its first-party games multiplatform. Now it\u2019s taking some…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":945681,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7],"tags":[354953,62888,20742,252,158,67,132,68,3768],"class_list":["post-945680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-exclusive-games","tag-gears-of-war","tag-halo","tag-microsoft","tag-technology","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-xbox"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116947440622964373","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=945680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/945681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=945680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=945680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=945680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}