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It seems that the so-called platform wars are on their way out, as Microsoft’s head of Xbox, Sarah Bond, has made it clear that the company is looking for a radical change in the way it deals with the concept of exclusivity, emphasizing that gamers have evolved beyond this old idea.
In a recent interview quoted by Mashable, Bond said:
“We see people evolving away from the idea of exclusivity. The biggest games in the world are available everywhere – look at Call of Duty, Minecraft, Fortnite, Roblox. These are the experiences that bring people together and build gaming communities. The idea of confining them to a single store or device is outdated.
The goal today is to allow gamers to play with their friends wherever they are, no matter what platform they’re on, and Xbox is diving deep into that experience and building its strategy around it.
These statements represent a major shift from Xbox’s previous policies, which relied mainly on its exclusive titles such as Halo, Gears of War and Forza to compete with Sony and Nintendo, but in recent years, Microsoft began to expand these games to appear on other platforms such as PlayStation, which some considered the end of classic exclusivity.
With the increased focus on cloud services and comprehensive subscriptions such as Game Pass, it seems that major companies are seeking to make their games available to as many users as possible instead of limiting them to a single device, and while this approach is widely welcomed among gamers, some still believe that exclusivity is what gives each platform its unique identity, which makes Nintendo, for example, the most prominent exception to this equation with its iconic titles such as Mario and Zelda.
Do you think Microsoft is moving in the right direction by ending exclusives?
