{"id":99697,"date":"2025-07-28T15:35:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-28T15:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/99697\/"},"modified":"2025-07-28T15:35:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T15:35:10","slug":"heres-why-console-exclusivity-could-be-dying-on-xbox-and-ps5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/99697\/","title":{"rendered":"Here’s Why Console Exclusivity Could Be Dying On Xbox And PS5"},"content":{"rendered":"

The start of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X\/S generation felt like a surprisingly old-school return to the console war rhetoric of yesteryear. Fans compared the numbers of teraflops<\/a>, and both console makers shelled out hundreds of millions to lock down exclusive games for their new devices. New Final Fantasy games were only PS5, while Microsoft took multiplatform games from its Bethesda acquisition and made them Xbox and PC-only releases<\/a>. We\u2019re halfway through now, though, and things feel dramatically different. Console exclusivity might not be dead, but it certainly appears to be in retreat. <\/p>\n

Why People Are Rushing To Sell Their Xbox Series X To GameStop Right Now<\/p>\n

The latest death knell for console gatekeeping came last Friday by way of a surprising new job listing on Sony\u2019s website<\/a>. The company is hiring for a senior director of multiplatform and account management, which is a fancy way of saying someone who will help Sony profit from bringing its games to more storefronts. This person will be in charge of \u201cglobal commercial strategy for PlayStation Studios software titles across all digital platforms beyond PlayStation hardware, including Steam, Epic Games Store, Xbox, Nintendo, and mobile.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fans are already treating this as a window into Sony\u2019s thinking moving forward, including the possibility of it bringing more of its own first-party exclusives to other platforms, something that seemed unthinkable even just a few months ago. The job listing for the multiplatform leadership role goes on to say, \u201cOversee the out-of-year (mid-range) commercial strategy for PlayStation Studios titles across all non-PlayStation platforms, driving long-term revenue growth and audience reach.\u201d It also lists direct reports that include people overseeing sales on both Xbox & PC.<\/p>\n

Sony\u2019s multiplatform approach began small with bringing big single-player exclusives like Horizon Zero Dawn and Days Gone to PC years after they were out on console. MLB: The Show is also on Xbox Series X\/S and Switch, though it\u2019s published by MLB on those platforms. Upcoming Bungie shooter Marathon is also multiplatform. Then last fall, Sony announced the Horizon Lego spin-off, Lego Horizon Adventures, for both PS5 and Switch. And just this month, Sony revealed it will publish Helldivers 2 on Xbox Series X\/S<\/a>. The new job listing, however, suggests things won\u2019t stop there, and that this may be a reaction to more than just Microsoft bailing on the hardware race. <\/p>\n

The tech giant has been on an accelerated course due to the struggling sales of Xbox this generation. Its multiplatform strategy began with reversing course on taking games exclusive and announcing ports of Grounded, Sea of Thieves, Hi-Fi Rush, and Pentiment<\/a> as trial balloons to test the response from prospective players on PS5 and Nintendo Switch. A year later, Forza Horizon 5 has made the jump, and Gears of War: Reloaded will bring the Locust-chain-sawing shooter franchise to Sony\u2019s platform almost 20 years after it became synonymous with Xbox. What\u2019s more, monthly sales charts show these ported exclusives, including Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, are selling great on its long-time rival\u2019s platform. <\/p>\n

One way to view rumblings that Sony will look to bring more of its games to other platforms is as a direct reaction to Microsoft essentially throwing in the towel on exclusivity. But ballooning blockbuster development budgets and stagnating console sales\u2014PS5 isn\u2019t surging past PS4, thanks to lost ground by Xbox\u2014suggests Sony is looking for more ways to profit off its games regardless of what competitors do. Helldivers 2 makes it easy to draw the current line at just multiplayer live service games, but if Sony really does see Xbox as becoming indistinguishable from a gaming PC in the future (complete with access to Steam<\/a>), it\u2019s not hard to see it replicating its single-player blockbuster strategy on Xbox as well.<\/p>\n

\"Helldivers<\/p>\n

Image: Arrowhead Game Studios<\/p>\n

Spider-Man is seven years old at this point. Bringing it to Xbox and Switch 2 for another few million sales would certainly be one way to squeeze more profit out of PlayStation Studios<\/a> while doing negligible damage to PS5 console momentum. Sony has made no secret about wanting to raise margins of its game-making business in recent years, and leaked data from the malicious Insomniac Games hack<\/a> offered a window into just how hard that can be with longer development times and IPs hitched to brutal licensing fees.<\/p>\n

These are all theoretical financial justifications for a future gaming landscape with fewer exclusives \u2014 outside of the reality distortion field forever surrounding Nintendo, at least. But another might simply be that people don\u2019t buy consoles that way anymore. \u201cPeople who buy a hardware system these days, they\u2019re doing it because of the ecosystem, because of their friends list,\u201d Circna gaming research director Mat Piscatella told The Game Business<\/a> last week. \u201cYou\u2019re not going to get people to transition consoles because of exclusives anymore. We\u2019re way beyond that point.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a version of what Phil Spencer admitted in 2023 at what now appears to have been an important inflection point for Xbox. \u201cThere is no world where Starfield is an 11\/10 and people start selling their PS5s,\u201d he told the Kinda Funny podcast<\/a> at the time. \u201cThat\u2019s not going to happen.\u201d He went on to say that many players are locked into wherever their digital libraries are now, calling the Xbox One\/PS4 battle the \u201cworst generation\u201d to lose from the perspective of fighting over market share. <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been skeptical of this view and think it undercounts Microsoft\u2019s persistent struggle to consistently ship high-quality exclusive games<\/a> that everyone wants to play. But it also seems undeniable that players, especially younger ones, are less attached to where they play games than ever as long as they can play what they want. Does this mean we\u2019ll see God of War Ragnar\u00f6k on Xbox Series X\/S next year? Almost certainly not. But exclusivity increasingly feels less like a promise binding all Sony first-party games, and more like a ticking clock competing platforms bake into their long-tail sales strategy. <\/p>\n

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