Xbox Chief Executive Officer Asha Sharma is certainly making a lot of public appearances in her first few months on the job. A few days ago, she appeared on a live interview on Bloomberg Tech, and yesterday, she was featured on Fortune Conversations, answering questions from Fortune's Senior Writer, Allie Garfinkle, as well as a few from the audience.
In the previous interview, she outlined the tension between Xbox as a big publisher and as a platform, which makes the exclusivity strategy problematic. In the new conversation, she called The Coalition's Gears of War: E-Day and inXile's Clockwork Revolution "signature exclusives" that are being introduced while the overall Xbox business still isn't healthy, and added that more exclusives could be considered if the business becomes healthy.
Look, I think that we are the number two publisher in the world, and you want your games to be everywhere. You're stronger when the world plays with you. At the same time, we are increasingly becoming more of a platform, and it's hard to find examples of platforms out there that don't have exclusive services and content. And so this is a journey for us. Our business isn't particularly healthy, as you notice, or as you noted, and so we're starting by introducing one to two signature exclusives, and as the business is healthy, we will look to try and do more.
Needless to say, Xbox fans immediately started to worry about what would happen if the business doesn't get much healthier in the near future. The most obvious answer would be a return to the full-on multiplatform strategy previously approved by now-retired CEO Phil Spencer.
The Xbox community also noted that those two games (especially Clockwork Revolution, a new IP) are unlikely to move the needle significantly either way. Indeed, exclusivity is often seen as an all-or-nothing proposition: either you commit one way or the other. That's what other platform holders have historically done, while Microsoft is currently wavering between these two extremes, with a strategy that looks confusing at least from the outside. The latest we've heard from Xbox Chief Content Officer Matt Booty, a couple of days ago, is that they'll evaluate single player game case-by-case, while multiplayer and live service games will remain multiplatform.
Even that is not quite clear, though. Why is Senua not exclusive while Clockwork Revolution is? Also, Gears of War: E-Day, while not primarily a live-service game, does feature extensive multiplayer modes, both cooperative and competitive. We'll likely remain confused alongside Xbox consumers until Microsoft finally lands on a clear, well-defined plan.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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