Microsoft is apparently reaching the upper limit of what it can offer exclusives, and now Xbox is taking inspiration from platform indie giants like Fortnite, Roblox, and Apex Legends.
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Like much of the world right now, the video games market is under tremendous pressure. AAA games were affected by unsustainable budgets, leading to massive layoffs as companies tried to turn a profit. There’s a common theme in the video game industry right now: everyone is willing to try anything to make more money.
Some of these approaches involve disrupting decades-old economic models. Microsoft, in particular, recently announced that it would break the proprietary exclusivity on Xbox games and offer four titles on competing platforms such as PlayStation and Nintendo Switch.
Xbox’s raison d’être has always been “games, anywhere, everywhere”, with the exception of first-party games made specifically for Xbox, such as Sea of Thieves, Grounded, Hi-Fi Rush and Pentiment. (All four games break exclusivity).
The ultimate goal for Xbox is pretty simple: maximize profits and revenue by using other platforms. Phil Spencer said it best when he said that Microsoft wants to “Use other platforms” to develop Xbox..
This decision was not made lightly and is based on years of data from the video game industry.
Xbox’s Matt Booty succinctly breaks down the current market trends and adequately explains the rationale for breaking exclusivity. In a recent Xbox podcast stream, Matt pointed out that some games are actually bigger than any one platform — rightly so, since these games are released and released. Provision on all Windows and platforms.
Fortnite can be played everywhere (well, except iOS, but that will change soon). This is what makes it so powerful and why it brings in billions of dollars a year. Now, Xbox wants to take action.
“We’ve seen this kind of reversal in the last 5 years, where the platform was the most important thing and the games fit into the platform.” shape Today, big games like Roblox or Fortnite can be bigger than any other. A single platform. So the way we think about these things has really changed.
What does this have to do with Xbox?
All of Microsoft’s biggest games are now live service titles that reach millions of people. Breaking exclusivity on this front makes more sense given the Xbox series’ low install base of around 23 million. Bringing Grounded and Sea of Thieves to PlayStation and Nintendo makes good business sense: these games need to be played by as many people as possible to spend and make money.
The other games, Pentiment and Hi-Fi Rush, are smaller in scale and don’t tip the scales one way or the other. The move could be aimed at raising funds for the studio.
Sony’s recent Holiday 2023 results are indeed a perfect example of this. PlayStation only had 123 million monthly active users, and free games would be the main reason for this influx. Roblox had just been released on PlayStation in October, so there was that It is possible that this huge increase in users was influenced by RobloxOne of the most popular games on the market today.
The next question is… when will we see Xbox or PlayStation games being sold? in Fortnite or Roblox?
