Can you sell Xbox consoles without exclusive games?

Exclusivity is an increasingly loose concept, and it's really only Nintendo that fully embraces it, while Microsoft has gone the furthest in abandoning it. Sony falls somewhere in between, not shying away from releasing games for PC and, surprisingly, Switch (Lego Horizon Adventures) and even Xbox (MLB The Show series) - but still has titles that remain exclusive for at least quite some time.

Microsoft, however, is going in a completely different direction and declared a year ago that it will release games for PlayStation and Switch. So far, it has only been older games where there is a lot of logic behind the decision, but this summer it was confirmed that Doom: The Dark Ages will be released simultaneously for all formats, despite the fact that it is a Bethesda title and that Microsoft's gaming boss Phil Spencer said at the time of the acquisition that it was about exclusive games.

Then, the other month, it was time for the next surprise, as it was announced that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle would be released for PlayStation 5 next year, meaning that any boost Microsoft might have got from Xbox sales this Christmas effectively disappeared. Plus, just the other week we read that Spencer has stated that there are no red lines around which Xbox games can come to other formats. Gears of War could very well come to Switch, and Halo to PlayStation. So, doesn't Microsoft want to sell consoles, and how do they expect their next Xbox to fly off the shelves if it has no exclusives?

There is little doubt that this was one of the main reasons why the PlayStation 5 took a big hit in the disaster year (for Microsoft) of 2022, and now they are going to have even fewer exclusives. So, what's the plan for them going forward? Who will buy Xbox and why? Is it Game Pass that will attract everyone, despite the fact that the service is already phenomenal, but not big enough?

I think a lot of that answer lies in the controversial campaign Microsoft has been running lately, claiming that anything can be an Xbox. In other words, it should be seen more as a service, rather than a platform. Whether this is a good strategy or not will be debated for a long time to come, but from a purely factual point of view there are both potential pros and cons. Among the latter we find that a lot of this strategy is based on cloud gaming, an exciting technology that, however, means a certain delay that makes faster action games, fighting and racing in particular lose entertainment value. In addition, these types of games are often not entirely suitable for touchscreens, which means that the mobile gaming aspect is still lost.

Among the benefits, however, is a much larger potential number of players than if Microsoft had stuck to consoles alone. Moreover, console gaming seems to be shrinking quite rapidly, putting them at risk of not being prepared for the future. And in very many cases, a certain input delay doesn't actually have much gaming significance.

The only generation that really went well for Microsoft was the Xbox 360, when they invested wholeheartedly in games and services that gamers really appreciated, and with Xbox One they initially did the exact opposite. The Xbox Series X/S is much better in this respect than its predecessor, but many had bought into Sony's ecosystem last generation and there have been very unclear messages, and until now, an almost surprisingly small batch of releases from Xbox Game Studio's many developers.

Microsoft themselves know this and what I suspect they are now doing is simply accepting their new role, and perhaps above all the new role of Xbox. Phil Spencer has recently said that it's outside the Xbox consoles that Microsoft's games division is growing, and perhaps they've finally realised that's a perfectly fine position to be in. Steam has, until recently, had no consoles but is a pretty dominant force anyway, and their Steam Deck is considered a huge success despite selling between 5-10 million units in three years - figures that would be considered a disaster for consoles.

The Xbox Series X/S is estimated to have sold around 30 million units, which is clearly more than Steam Deck and should be more than enough to stand on its own, assuming the hardware doesn't need to be subsidised, and this is where I think the pieces start to fall into place. For the next generation, Microsoft will not overly market the console, but see it as one of many ways to access the Xbox ecosystem.

Reasonably, it is built like a PC so no separate versions are needed, while all console players will be able to choose whether they want to cut back on something to get better frame rate or invest more in graphics. This also allows Microsoft, like Steam Deck, to release a more powerful version of its console as it goes along without having to remake the games.

I'll take it for granted that they will still have exclusive games (and perhaps especially timed-exclusive ones). All game services have shown the need for such, and even Steam has Valve games exclusively. However, there will be fewer of them, and the goal will be to make money on consoles right from the start. That way, they can release both cheaper Xbox consoles and a behemoth that costs at least as much as the PlayStation 5 Pro (and thus live up to the promise of an extremely powerful console).

With Game Pass, Xbox for multiple devices, and the often talked about portable Xbox, I think Microsoft may have a concept that will still make most people quite happy. Especially if they can also offer, for example, Epic Games Store and Steam, to thus be consoles with access to pretty much all games (except Nintendo's, of course). Whether that's enough, only time will tell.