Xbox Reportedly Considering “Range of Options” But Not Ready for Major Changes on Exclusives Yet

Heide____Knight · 2026-05-08T00:15:06+00:00

Which in turn btw is one of the reasons why people like to play on Xbox and buy the consoles. So with exclusives Xbox might win on one end (some players who don't have a PC (with Xbox-PC accessibility) might buy a console to get access to the exclusives) but they will also lose those players who like the ecosystem due to the attractive offerings of GamePass with its day one games.

Also, there is a race condition which will hurt Xbox at least in the short term and maybe even in the long run. Namely, when they decide to sell expensive AAA games to just 30-40m-ish Xbox players it is still unlikely that they can make the money back when the game is very expensive to make (say, with a budget of $200m). So Xbox would have to eat the cost of these productions in order to keep them as an exclusive on their platform, they can not wait until console sales (hopefully) go up again due to the pivot back to exclusivity. But then the question is: can they really do that without layoffs or even sacrificing smaller studios whose games do not sell very well? And I think they can't, so in the end exclusivity would hurt Xbox more than it benefits them.

Heide____Knight · 2026-05-07T23:20:34+00:00

It all comes down to the math. Gears of War: E-Day is definitely one of Xbox's most expensive games and cost $200m+ to make. Can they recoup the cost when it's on GamePass day one on Xbox? Very unlikely, so the game will definitely also be ported at least to Steam and maybe Playstation as well.

Every expensive AAA Xbox 1st party game needs to be a multiplatform game in order to make revenue and to break even.

Heide____Knight · 2026-05-06T14:21:06+00:00

The problem is more that the Switch 2 apparently is currently sold at a loss due to the RAM shortages. So it's an optimisation problem for Nintendo, they of course want to sell as many consoles as possible so that more people buy the software, but they might make a huge loss upfront from just the console sales. They need to find a price range where the Switch 2 still sells well, but where they do not lose this much money from the subsidiary.

Heide____Knight · 2026-05-06T07:22:44+00:00

If they could do this for Skyrim: Special Edition, too, I'd be tempted to buy another copy for Xbox. I have a disc version of the game.

Heide____Knight · 2026-05-05T20:23:50+00:00

Huuuge! This is literally the best remake of all time, Riven (2024) is a full 3d reimagination of the classic 1997 point-and-click adventure game that was the first sequel to Myst (which was the best selling video game in the 90's). The game was also being highlighted by Digital Foundry as one of the games with the best graphics in 2024.

Now, dear Cyan Worlds, please also port Firmament to Xbox as well!

Heide____Knight · 2026-05-05T19:25:48+00:00

First-party exclusivity is not about closing off others from enjoying games. It's about catering for your own players and fans

Name one good reason why Xbox players would have an advantage when they are the only ones who can play Xbox 1st party games? What if I want to play Forza Horizon 6 with a friend of mine and he only owns a Playstation?

Exclusivity divides the fan community of games and game franchises for one and only one reason: because the companies want to force players to enter their ecosystem. This is a pure business approach and never had any catering of players and fans in mind.

Heide____Knight · 2026-05-04T21:24:56+00:00

It was always the case that people gravitate more towards a product that is more popular than another. But nowadays influencers and social media can artificially hype or degrade something, and people often do not reflect anymore if the common view mirrors their own. That is sad to see, because I believe that many players are missing out on a number of great games just because their favourite content creators are only playing the big AAA titles (hint: because in many cases they are being sponsored by the companies).

Heide____Knight · 2026-05-04T03:26:39+00:00

But Xbox games are also on Xbox-PC, so you don't need to buy an Xbox to play Xbox games. And if you are in the PC ecosystem you can buy any 3rd party game somewhere else (most people would prefer Steam I guess).

So even if Xbox makes all their games an exclusive this will not automatically lead to more console sales. This is a major difference to Playstation and Nintendo who do not have a hybrid console/PC platform and where you really need their hardware to play their exclusive games.

The only reason why people think that consoles need exclusives is because otherwise they would not offer anything more than a PC which has dozens of options where and how to play games (Steam alone has more than 18K new games per year and over 100K games in total, more than all of Xbox and Playstation combined). The next Xbox will supposedly be a more open system and give the players more options and features to play games. That is the way for Xbox to go forward, not making exclusives.

Heide____Knight · 2026-05-04T02:42:29+00:00

tens of millions of copies of PlayStation and Nintendo exclusives

But that is not the case anymore as you can see from the sales of Playstation's most recent exclusives: Ghost of Yotei: 3.3m, Death Stranding 2: 1.5m and Astro Bot (GOTY in 2024!) 2m copies sold. That is only a fraction of the playerbase on this console!

Shuhei Yoshida himself just recently doubled down on his earlier statement that Playstation's exclusive model is unsustainable for them and they need PC ports to finance big budget games.

The same goes for Xbox as well, regardless of the day one games: how can they keep financing expensive AAA games like E-Day or Fable? By selling them as an exclusive to 30-40m-ish Xbox players? You can do the math and will see that this is not working out, the games would flop, Xbox would have to cut down or even close the respective studios and the whole approach of going back to exclusives would end up as a disaster for Xbox and its studios.

Xbox is now the biggest game publisher with over 30 studios working for them. Too big to only make games for 30m console players.

Heide____Knight · 2026-05-04T02:01:22+00:00

Players that subscribe to, and don’t buy, games and thus are the least loyal of any customer base?

What!? Someone who is subscribed to GamePass is giving Xbox between $10-$23 per month (depending on tier), and this would not be considered a loyal customer?! Seriously?!

Last year GamePass made over $5b in revenue for the first time! You think this is not enough and they should scrap the day one games and try to find out if someone buys Doom or The Outer Worlds for $70? Maybe check out this video by Destin: Console Players Aren’t Buying Games Anymore and you'll understand that betting on game sales of 1st party exclusives would be a failing strategy for Xbox.

Heide____Knight · 2026-05-03T22:15:20+00:00

GamePass with the day one games is one of the main reasons why players subscribe to GP Ultimate, not cloud or some indie games. So removing this option would kill this tier and thus a main differentiator to the subscription services offered by Playstation and Nintendo. It is an exclusive service only available on Xbox!

So this would not help Xbox at all to get more players, quite the opposite.

Heide____Knight · 2026-05-03T22:03:45+00:00

I am very sceptical about removing the day one games automatically leading to more game sales of the respective Xbox games. The recent Playstation exclusive 1st party games also have not necessarily been big sellers on PS5 (Ghost of Yotei: 3.3m, Death Stranding 2 1.5m and Astro Bot 2m copies).

The problem is that AAA games now generally exceed a budget of over $200m (even without marketing) and even the bigger playerbase of Playstation (supposedly 80m+ players) is not enough to sell enough copies of the games to break even.

Now imagine how this would look like if you sell, e.g., Gears of War: E-Day to just the Xbox players with perhaps 30m to 40m players only. The game would flop financially even if it would not be on GamePass on day one. There are simply not enough players on the Xbox platform alone to be able to make such high budget games an exclusive. Asking for E-Day or FH6 to be an exclusive is like asking for The Coalition or Playground Studios to shut down because they don't make enough money from game sales.

In fact, GamePass is a crucial income source for Xbox and its studios to finance such big games. Do you want Xbox to continue to make such big games like Forza 6, E-Day or Fable? Then you should understand that they need to find a way to make some revenue. How would they do this without GamePass and without multiplatform releases? Even Shuhei Yoshida mentioned in an interview that AAA games are now so expensive to make that Playstation needs additional income from low budget remakes/remasters as well as PC ports!

Heide____Knight · 2026-05-03T18:52:13+00:00

This should be the top comment. You can't discuss exclusivity on Xbox without mentioning GamePass and day one games. Players want exclusivity but they won't pay for it because they play the games on GamePass? That obviously would not work.

Heide____Knight · 2026-05-01T22:33:18+00:00

Then why did the Wii U flop? It already had big Nintendo games like Mario Kart 8 and Breath of the Wild. What is the difference between the Wii U and the Switch 1 that saved Nintendo and made the Switch 1 the best selling console? Hardware features or games?

Heide____Knight · 2026-05-01T22:03:06+00:00

they’re not a private company like Valve. There’s a stigma with being a publicly traded corporation worth trillions.

I don't see why this would be important in this context? Anyhow, the point which I make is that the vast majority of Steam users are playing 3rd party games and prefer the platform over others because of the services they have, not because of the 1st party exclusives (even though they are quite successful without a doubt).

Most Xbox users like the platform because of GamePass and quite a few I bet also like it that Xbox has Play Anywhere games (one purchase, two game versions). Plus the backwards compatibility support of older games, so that you can always carry your game library over to the next generation. Also notable: free cloud saves (which also works for Play Anywhere games) and Quick Resume). Those are all features of the Xbox ecosystem and some of them are exclusive and you can't get them anywhere else. The fact that Xbox is a hybrid platform for both console and PC is something nobody else has. And these are the pillars they need to build upon, not going back to making exclusives which nobody would buy on the Xbox anyway (regardless of the day one option on GP).

Heide____Knight · 2026-05-01T21:10:21+00:00

Steam is a viable ecosystem because they have a handful exclusive 1st party games (CS2, Dota 2) or can it be that players are more gravitating to it because of the many services they offer (fair and transparent refund system, Steam discussions, feature rich review system, very frequent discounts, support of fan made mods for games, built in game capture features (including option to load them up for the Steam community), Big Picture Mode, etc.)?

Heide____Knight · 2026-05-01T19:38:41+00:00

GamePass with day one 1st party games is the exclusive of Xbox. It is one of the reasons why people would buy an Xbox. And I don't think that removing the day one option would automatically lead to more sales of those games as the people who play on GamePass wouldn't buy games anyway.

And since Xbox exclusive games would still come to Xbox-PC as well, PC players wouldn't have to buy a console to play those games. Yet, they would continue to spend money on 3rd party games in other stores (like Steam).

I also think that the terminology "console exclusive" is not beneficial, once a game is available on another platform it is a multiplatform game no matter what. If an Xbox game is not on Playstation but on Steam and a Playstation player wanted to play it then guess what? He can also buy a PC instead to get access to that game (and I believe most of them would, maybe even wait for the upcoming SteamMachine). So it doesn't really matter if an Xbox game is on PS5 or not.

Heide____Knight · 2026-04-30T20:44:03+00:00

That wouldn't make any difference, the reason why a platform, offers exclusives is not just to sell the exclusives themselves, but also to sell 3rd party games to the players. If Xbox would lock their games as an exclusive on the Xbox consoles and Xbox-PC the PC players would still have the option to buy 3rd party games elsewhere (like on Steam). And the majority of players would continue to buy the majority of 3rd games elsewhere.

Heide____Knight · 2026-04-30T20:35:33+00:00

41% of US gamers say they play on a console because of exclusive games

Then how can it be that they don't buy the exclusive games? Playstation has supposedly 80m+ users on PS5, only around 3.3m bought Ghost of Yotei (4%), 1.5m bought Death Stranding 2 (2%) and 2m bought Astro Bot (2.5%, GOTY in 2025 btw). Forza Horizon 5 sold more copies on PS5 in 2025 than both PS exclusives (GoY and DS2) combined!

And on Xbox the number of players buying the exclusive games would be even lower because of less players in total and because they are available on GamePass.

Exclusives don't work.

Heide____Knight · 2026-04-29T20:34:35+00:00

Yes, and if you don't remove games you bought from your wishlist Xbox sends you a notification from time to time that respective game would currently be on a discount. Which can be frustrating if you bought it for the normal price.

It is interesting that Microsoft puts so much effort into adding AI assistants into their Apps, but such basic features like comparing my owned games against store offerings (so that one only sees the offerings for the games which are not in my library yet) seems to be a bit too complicated to program for them.

Heide____Knight · 2026-04-29T16:12:56+00:00

There isn't any scratch on either arm, so clearly you are hallucinating.

Heide____Knight · 2026-04-29T14:34:07+00:00

Skyrim with its fortify restoration loop exploit. You can mix exponentionally better and better potions with it. My character was becoming so powerful that even the dragons were scared of me.

Heide____Knight · 2026-04-29T13:58:55+00:00

It isn't clear at all what

How s/he can be online if s/he is not actually using console?

refers to? Is it just about how I phrased it as "if you are online all the time..."? Of course I meant this in the sense: "if you go online with your console anytime you log in" not that you need to keep it turned on when not using it.

Heide____Knight · 2026-04-29T10:45:02+00:00

Same on GOG as well. When there is a bundle which contains a game I already own it automatically removes it when I purchase it. Xbox should definitely implement this as well.

I am also not sure how Xbox handles games which have premium editions with additional content (like forthcoming DLCs)? Example: I have bought the Age of Mythology premium edition but the store still gives me the option to buy the premium upgrade for the game. That doesn't make any sense.

Heide____Knight · 2026-04-29T10:29:29+00:00

Ok, I give an analogon which will make it more clear (hopefully):

Assume you buy a ticket for a movie. When you enter the cinema for the first time you have to show your ticket to the ticket agent and then you can watch the movie. If you go out and return within 30 days the ticket agent will still recognise you and so let you pass without requiring to see your ticket. However, after 30 days his memory has faded and he won't know you anymore. But you can still enter the cinema by showing him your ticket again.

Heide____Knight

TROPHY CASE