The CEO of Microsoft, the company that owns Xbox, wants to end the idea of exclusives. For as long as it has existed, the gaming industry has featured several companies release these big, fancy machines that are meant to last about a decade. To encourage you to choose one over the other, they dangle exclusive games over them. Mario, Halo, Uncharted, The Last of Us, Gears of War, the list goes on and on, but it is a big part of a console’s identity. With that said, console exclusivity has gotten more and more contentious in recent years, especially as these platform holders chase after third-party developers and franchises like Spider-Man, Final Fantasy, and more to make them exclusive.
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This has become a major talking point during the hearing between Microsoft and the FTC with regards to the former’s acquisition of Activision. There’s a lot of concern that Microsoft could make Call of Duty, one of the biggest franchises in gaming, an exclusive if left unchecked. Microsoft has said it has no intention of doing that. With that said, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testified today (via The Verge) and noted that Xbox head Phil Spencer is left in charge of those kinds of decisions. However, Nadella noted that if it was up to him, he’d probably eradicate exclusive games.
“If it was up to me I would love to get rid of the entire exclusives on consoles, but that’s not for me to define especially as a low share player in the console market,” said Nadella. “The dominant player there [Sony] has defined market competition using exclusives, so that’s the world we live in. I have no love for that world.”
Whether or not a day will ever come where exclusives don’t exist is a mystery. It does seem pretty unlikely given how successful Nintendo and PlayStation have been with theirs. Xbox has some hits, but they’ve definitely fallen off in recent years.
What do you think of console exclusives? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @Cade_Onder.
