While the fate of Xbox exclusives is now more than uncertain, journalist Chris Dring says that it is only a matter of time before Microsoft releases all of its games on competing consoles. Present at the GDC, he was able to discuss with many developers and publishers who no longer see the point of releasing their games only on Xbox.
Last month, Xbox dropped a little bombshell on the video game industry. For the first time, the brand announced the launch of 4 of its exclusives on PS5 and Nintendo Switch. From then on, the question arose: is this the end of Xbox exclusives? For now, it is best to avoid putting the cart before the horse. After all, we are only talking about 4 games here, certainly very important in the Xbox ecosystem, but not “major” like Starfield can be.
But the strategy has sowed doubt among developers and publishers, already increasingly cautious about the idea of releasing their games on Xbox. This is confirmed by Chris Dring, journalist at GamesIndustry.biz, who was able to speak with several members of the industry during the Game Developers Conference. “A big company that released a big game last year said to me, ‘I don’t know why we bothered to support [la plateforme]’”, he relates.
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Developers no longer want to release their games only on Xbox
According to Chris Dring, publishers are very worried about the fall in popularity of Xbox, particularly in Europe, where “performance would simply go down.” “We put a lot of effort into making a Series S and an X version of a game when, to be honest with you, for us the market is PC and PS5,” an editor would have confided to the journalist. Not to mention the repeated complaints from developers about the difficulty of creating a game on an Xbox Series S that is too underpowered.
Also, for Chris Dring, there is no longer any doubt: “the majority” Xbox exclusives will eventually release competing consoles. On one condition however: “assuming that [le marché] progresses as Xbox thinks it probably will”. Everything is still unclear, therefore, and we will probably have to wait a few more months before the situation becomes clearer. There remains the question of the next generation of Xbox consoles. According to Chris Dringe, it remains to be seen whether developers will still want to create games for this platform.