Insider Leaks New Details on Microsoft’s Approach to Future Xbox Exclusives

Posted by By our-little-miss-is-home December 21, 2024 26 Views 5 Min Read
Insider Leaks New Details on Microsoft's Approach to Future Xbox Exclusives



Summary

  • Xbox exclusives will reportedly be exceptions, not the norm, going forward.
  • Microsoft will reportedly only keep future games exclusive to Xbox in exceptional circumstances, like its studio lacking the time or other resources for porting.
  • As far as AAA titles are concerned, permanent Xbox console exclusives may soon become a thing of the past.

Future Xbox exclusives are likely to become exceptions rather than the norm, a well-known industry insider has said. This claim was offered as part of a wider explanation about how Microsoft supposedly plans to decide on which games to keep exclusive to Xbox moving forward.

Microsoft officially started its multi-platform publishing foray in February 2024, when it announced that four Xbox games would be ported to rival platforms. That quartet subsequently materialized in the form of Pentiment, Hi-Fi Rush, Grounded, and Sea of Thieves. Even before this multi-platform pivot, Microsoft insisted it plans to make future platform exclusivity decisions on a case-by-case basis, having repeatedly said as much to regulators back when it was trying to push the Activision Blizzard acquisition over the finish line.

Big Xbox Event Expected for January 2025

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Big Xbox Event Expected for January 2025

According to multiple reliable sources, Xbox may be busy preparing for a major first-party showcase sometime in January 2025.

Industry insider Jez Corden has now shared some more information about what this “case-by-case basis” approach might actually entail. During the December 20 episode of The Xbox Two Podcast, the long-time leaker said that “exclusives are going to be an exception” for Xbox moving forward, citing sources familiar with the matter. “The case to keep a game exclusive is going to be a catalog of incidentals,” Corden explained. Elaborating on that notion, he said those incidentals would include scenarios in which an Xbox developer didn’t have time or other resources for a multi-platform port, like lacking a support studio.

The Era of Permanent Xbox Console Exclusives May Be Coming to an End

Moving forward, there will no longer be any cases in which a game remains exclusive to Microsoft’s consoles simply because the company wanted to keep it just for Xbox fans, Corden said. This claim ties into another one of his recent reports that saw the long-time leaker claim the era of permanent Xbox console exclusives could be coming to an end.

The case to keep a[n Xbox] game exclusive is going to be a catalog of incidentals.

Exactly how quickly Microsoft will be porting its future first-party games to rival platforms is currently unclear. Black Ops 6 was a day-one release on PlayStation consoles in late October 2024, but the first-person shooter was a special case, with its timely port stemming from the ten-year Call of Duty deal Microsoft signed with PlayStation in 2023.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle might be a more relevant indicator of how Microsoft plans to handle its first-party titles moving forward; MachineGames’ critically acclaimed action adventure debuted on the Xbox Series X/S and PC in early December 2024, but even before that happened, it was confirmed to be coming to the PS5 in spring 2025. The next batch of Xbox games that will go multi-platform might be announced in January 2025, when Microsoft is rumored to be hosting its next Xbox Developer Direct.

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