Xbox is a bit of a mess right now, there's no arguing that. Having recently sold several developers and spun off a few more, it's hard to get an idea of what Xbox's strategy is right now. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma wants the company to become a platform again, and the move to more established franchises is an indicator of that.
We've also seen Xbox return somewhat to making exclusive games, with Gears of War: E-Day and Clockwork Revolution being Xbox exclusives at launch. It's a bold move, especially when a game like Gears cost hundreds of millions to make, and now there's speculation that these two might not be the last games Xbox makes.
Xbox is once again trying to make its best games exclusive
That's according to a new report from Bloomberg, which claimed that Xbox will “make more of its best titles exclusive to Xbox,” so people will actually have a reason to go out and buy one. It's pretty much back to basics, although you could argue that Xbox briefly went third party because no one was buying the consoles even though they had exclusives.
Again, this also gives us no idea which games are and aren't coming to the PlayStation or Nintendo Switch 2. The phrase “best titles” isn't very clear as quality is subjective, but it's possible that it could refer to games like The Elder Scrolls and Fallout.
Call of Duty will likely never remain exclusive to just one system, as that would be franchise suicide, as it likely is with Minecraft and any other large multiplayer title that relies on a large player base. The only exception might be Halo, a series so intertwined with the Xbox that it's still weird to see Halo: Campaign Evolved as a PS5 game on store shelves.
In any case, no one will really know what will be exclusive at any given moment, including Xbox itself. It seemed pretty clear that Gears of War: E-Day was going to come out on PS5 before someone at Xbox decided at the last minute that it shouldn't, so I guess we'll take Xbox games on a case-by-case basis from now on.
