Xbox brings back exclusives * **
Two upcoming Xbox games will never come to PlayStation 5, Microsoft says
Microsoft’s big announcement at its Xbox game showcase today wasn’t a game, but a strategy.
The previously announced that two big upcoming games, Gears of War E-Day (October 6) and Clockwork Revolution (2027), will both be released as “XBOX console exclusives,” the company revealed.
*That phrase means that Xbox is the only console they’ll be released on, but they are also still slated for PC, including on Steam. I noted this, because the wording “Xbox console exclusive” led some Game File readers to ask me if that meant “no PC.” It doesn’t.
For the last couple of years, Microsoft has shipped more games to rival PlayStation and Nintendo consoles, including a Gears of War remake to PS5 last summer. That was under Xbox’s prior management.
In April, I’d asked new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma about when she’d be deciding on whether to return some Xbox franchises to Xbox exclusivity. Her answer at the time:
Sharma: Nothing we're ready to commit to. It's been 60 days. These are decade-long decisions from before. These are very consequential decisions. I want to make the right decision, not the fastest decision.
Just past 100 days, she and her team have made the call about at least a couple of games.
On her Twitter/X feed today, Sharma wrote:
We want people to choose XBOX because of great games and experiences. That also means giving you something that was made for XBOX.
Gears of War: E-Day and Clockwork Revolution will be XBOX console exclusives!
And on the official Xbox news page, the company emphasized that these are meant to be permanently on Xbox/PC, permanently not on anything else:
These are not timed exclusives. Games already announced for multiplatform releases will stick to that plan – we’re committed to investing in and growing XBOX both on console and beyond.
** Sharma signaled an openness to making some Xbox games exclusive interviews last week, when she told a Bloomberg interviewer that the company is…
“… the number two publisher in the world.. And in order to be a great publisher, you must have your games reach large audiences to play. At the same time, we’re increasingly becoming a platform. In order to be a platform, you must have exclusive content and services. We’re looking at that very closely. We have to be very thoughtful about each title and how we want to think about it and learn from similar cases in the industry. And that’s what we’re doing.”
Consistent with that, not every upcoming internally developed game from Microsoft’s Xbox studios is skipping PlayStation.
During today’s showcase, Microsoft also revealed a third Hellblade game from its studio Ninja Theory. That game, called Senua, will ship in 2027 on Xbox, PC and PS5. It also offered more details on State of Decay 3, another internally developed game, revealing that it too is slated to ship in 2027 on Xbox, PC and PS5.
Microsoft’s biggest owned franchises, such as Call of Duty and Minecraft, are not expected to abandon PlayStation (and are in fact CoD is committed to the PlayStation through 2033 or so), but some first-party Microsoft games in 2027 will still come to PlayStation as well.
Game File reached out to Microsoft for more details on how it made decisions on Gears as exclusive and State of Day as not. They declined to go into further details. But it’s worth considering that the day-and-date release of Gears of War Reloaded on Xbox and PlayStation last summer gave Microsoft some data about the cost-benefit of having a new Gears on or off PlayStation.
I wonder if this strategy will work. It seems confusing that some games are exclusive, while others aren’t.
This just seems weird to me. Aren't physical consoles typically not moneymakers for these companies? I have a hard time believing this will actually increase software sales long term and it just gates off content from more people, which is just worse for consumers... I understand a vocal minority (?) wants this but I'm my opinion this is backsliding.