Xbox, the lack of exclusives weighs very little

Xbox

Yesterday was a bit of a turbulent day for all gamers, because let's be honest with ourselves, Starfield's postponement is a shame for everyone. However, we know Bethesda Softworks products well and we know that RPGs of that magnitude hardly manage to land on the market without problems, therefore the reference can also be seen as a positive thing.

Today, however, I am not here to justify the postponement, since these are corporate choices that on the one hand I understand, but on the other hand they leave me a little annoyed (why communicate a date if you are not sure? Of course we know why, but is it really right to do it?). Anyway, what I want to try to explain today is the concept behind the Xbox strategy, the same strategy that I tried to tell you about two years ago and that many of you somehow agreed.

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True, Xbox does not have any kind of exclusive video game planned this year (at least for now), even if on balance, on the contrary, 2023 risks being very crowded for Xbox. The competition has already landed two heavyweights such as Horizon: Forbidden West (available for purchase on Amazon) and Gran Turismo 7, ready to launch the new God of War on the market by the end of the year and the two exclusive storms, GhostWire Tokyo (already released) and Forspoken next October and who knows if Final Fantasy XVI isn't there too. Nintendo is the best placed of all from this point of view, thanks to a really scary lineup that we struggle to even list.

There is, however, a huge difference between these three video game giants, the fact that Sony and Nintendo they must necessarily focus on exclusives to sell their console, a strategy anchored to old dogmas (not wrong, simply different) that relegate the need to produce and be well equipped on annual releases. A reference from Sony or Nintendo can weigh double if not triple the weight of an Xbox one, why you ask? Very simple, the Xbox strategy is GamePass centric and with this it does not mean that Microsoft does not care about selling the consoles, but that simply the thrust of the sale of the consoles is directly proportional to the quality of the subscription.

What makes GamePass attractive are not the exclusives, which in any case remain an important boost, as much as the possibility of playing a series of important titles from day one that avoid an expense between 20 and 70 euros. To us gamers what really interests us is to play, both titles that we might never have bought and important games that perhaps, on the contrary, we would have bought and then played. The references of Starfield and Redfall weigh, up to a certain point, since the titles will still be released in 2023 and by the end of the year it will be enough, on balance, to have partnerships of important day one titles.


After all, the idea behind the GamePass strategy is precisely to have many experiences per day one, regardless of their exclusivity or not. To give you an example, if the Activision-Blizzard agreement is successful, Xbox will have any future Call of Duty on day one, although it will continue to be released on PlayStation. The fact that COD is included in the subscription already makes it an exclusive in itself, as the community will be more oriented towards subscribing to this service rather than spending 70-80 euros for a game that is destined to last a year.

Now it is too early to reach a conclusion, but I am convinced that Phil Spencer and associates are not too worried by these two references and I think that on June 12 we will see (as well as updates on exclusives) also many third parties ending up on the GamePass on day one, which would make it unnecessary to necessarily have exclusives for this end of 2022, which in any case will still be full of titles to play video games. Unless further references, we already know that we will be playing Sniper Elite 5, Deathloop, A Plague Tale Requiem, Atomic Heart, Scorn and Darktide since the day of release thanks to GamePass, considering that other confirmations will probably arrive, I would say that the strategy works and can be a good "hole stage" waiting for the heavyweights to arrive in 2023. It is inevitable, however, that the service will suffer a slowdown in subscribers (which however continues to grow), but even here I think that the Redmond company already has expected such result.


Different speech, however, if Microsoft were to stop with games on day one, this would be a big problem and would be in contrast with the strategy, a little (as mentioned above) if Sony and Nintendo do not should have exclusives coming out during the year. To sum up, therefore, analyzing the Xbox strategy, not having Starfield and Redfall for this purpose 2022 is more a regret than anything else, but the times are very different compared to Xbox One, where if exclusive weight exclusives did not arrive it was practically useless to own the console, as there was no kind of added value for the players.

Today, we have Xbox Game Pass both on PC and on cloud and consoles and this is the only real exclusive that Microsoft must continue on to work, with or without their own unreleased games within the subscription, games that will arrive anyway, with patience and above all hoping that the quality remains high and continues the good work seen in 2021.