Over the past few years, the Xbox brand has pivoted its role in the industry. What used to be the exclusive home for first-party franchises like Halo, Gears of War, and Forza is now seeing its games released on Sony and Nintendo consoles.
It’s an event that, even if you go back ten years, seems impossible; why would a rival console maker release their marquee titles on a competing platform? For starters, it’s because those in charge of the Xbox brand believe the industry has moved past the need for exclusive games.
“We’re really seeing people evolve way past that,” Sarah Bond, president of Microsoft, told Mashable recently. “The biggest games in the world are available everywhere. You look at Call of Duty, you look at Minecraft, you look at Fortnite, you look at Roblox. That’s actually what’s really driving community in gaming. That’s where people gather, they have experiences.”
Bond has a point: some of the largest communities in gaming are Call of Duty, Minecraft, and Roblox. The first two are Microsoft-owned properties, and the last thing they want to do is fracture those communities.
You want to be able to play with your friends anywhere, regardless of what they’re on, and we’re really leaning into that with this experience because it just opens up another way for you to play – as does cloud, as does PC, as do the consoles that we all own and have in our living room.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, a first-party Xbox game, is currently available on PlayStation 5 and will come to Nintendo Switch 2 in 2026. Gears of War: Reloaded, the remaster of the Xbox 360’s exclusive killer app, launched simultaneously on Xbox, PS5, and PC. It’s a sign of the times at Xbox, but is the rest of the industry in agreement?
As Xbox Pushes Non-Exclusive Games, Their Biggest Competitors Are Thriving
Since the launch of the PlayStation 5 in 2020, Sony has enjoyed sustained success over Microsoft’s Xbox Series X|S.
For many, it is the preferred place to play multiplatform games. It’s gotten to the point that if I see streams or videos of people playing multiplatform games, they’re either on PS5 or using a DualSense controller. This is true even for first-party Microsoft games; the amount of Ninja Gaiden 4 videos I’ve seen with DualSense controls is staggering.
You can argue that a key reason for the PS5’s success, though, is its impressive line-up of exclusive games. We finally caught a glimpse at Marvel’s Wolverine, Ghost of Yotei is a fantastic successor to Ghost of Tsushima, and countless other exclusive PS5 games have made the console a worthwhile investment.
The biggest indicator, though, that exclusive games can still sell platforms, is the success of both the Nintendo Switch and, recently, the Nintendo Switch 2. Chances are that if you own a Nintendo console, you’re buying it to play Nintendo games you can’t play elsewhere. There are indies available through the Nintendo eShop, but more often than not, you own a Switch for Mario, Zelda, and more recently, Donkey Kong Bananza. Kirby Air Riders and Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, both of which are also exclusive, are coming later this year.
Nintendo has been breaking sales records with the Nintendo Switch 2, selling 2.45 million units in the United States in its first three months. That exceeds the previous record holder, the PlayStation 4, which sold 2.2 million units during its first three months. The sky’s the limit for Nintendo, which wants to sell 25 million Switch 2 units by the end of March 2026. Those sales are going to be carried by, presumably, exclusive games you can’t get anywhere else.
It begs the question: if you can play the best Xbox games on PS5, PC, or in some cases, Switch 2, why do you even need to own an Xbox? That’s a question Microsoft needs to answer, especially as they’re starting to talk about the next Xbox console.
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Author: 360 Technology Group
