Xbox Survey Asks About Making Every 1st-Party Game Xbox Console Exclusive, Except Call of Duty - News
by William D'Angelo , posted 4 days ago / 2,570 Views
Microsoft might be considering making every first-party Xbox game, except for Call of Duty, an Xbox console exclusive. This is according to a new survey sent out to some Xbox Insiders and reported by Windows Central.
"Imagine it was announced that all future title releases from every Xbox-developed gaming franchise except Call of Duty will be console-exclusive to Xbox," reads the survey." For Minecraft only, existing titles would no longer be available for purchase on PlayStation or Nintendo consoles and would not receive any new content update. However, there is no impact to any of the existing titles or content you already own. However, there is no impact to any of the existing titles or content you already own. Nothing changes on PC in this announcement."
The survey also says, "Imagine it was announced that all future title releases in the Fallout franchise will be console-exclusive to Xbox and no longer available on PlayStation or Nintendo. Existing Fallout titles would remain available where they are today. Nothing changes on PC with this announcement."
The same thing is also mentioned for other Xbox titles like The Elder Scrolls, Doom, Physint, and Diablo.
The survey asks after every page if either of any of this were to happen what would the most likely outcome be to play any of the new exclusive content. The options are "On an existing XBOX I own," "On a new Xbox Series X|S I would decide to purchase," On a PC," "I would skip playing because it would now be unavailable on my preferred consoles," "Something else," and "Not interested in playing exclusive content."
This is just a survey and does not mean Xbox will be making every first-party Xbox title an Xbox console exclusive. But it does suggest they are at least considering it.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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Just make as much as you can exclusives. Give me actual reasons to own these consoles, especially with how expensive they've become
Minecraft seems like a big risk. A lot of people play that on PlayStation and Nintendo. But if COD and Minecraft are the only things that Xbox allows on other consoles, that seems to make sense to me.
Yeah, Minecraft is a huge seller and constant player retention game on Switch and PlayStation. Keeping both that and Call of Duty multiplatform makes sense. Xbox can then have Halo, Gears of War, Forza and the rest as console exclusives.
Ok but here me out... Minecraft 2. Only on xbox
xbox owners say yes
sony owners say no
What's the point of such a totally silly survey?
Do they really think their most rabid fanbase will answer: "Of course Playstation owners should also play our games?"
I would assume they would want to ask people outside of Xbox owners. This makes sense because it appears to be asking, in a roundabout way, would you buy an Xbox to play these games if they weren't available on your platform. That has to be the question here.
This is even more important now more than ever as the rising cost of hardware makes the prospect of future multiconsoles owners less and less likely.
I would assume they plan to send it to others after the Xbox Insider survey. They would likely also do focus groups where they bring in random cross-sections of the gaming populace, show them Project Helix, and ask them questions about it, including showing them some of the games that will be on it, and asking them if they would buy Helix if those games were exclusive to it and PC.
I guess after that move they can fire a more people because the studios will be making way less money
way less?
Xbox games don't seem to be selling on PS5 either lol
I am sure that doom, Diablo, elders scroll, Tony hawk etc all sell atleast on par or way better on PlayStation than xbox
I say sharing the appeal of some of the biggest gaming IPs with the competition was never a smart move to begin with. Doom, Halo, Forza, Elder Scrolls, Gears, Tony Hawk, Wolfenstein, Hellblade, Fable, Psychonauts, Age of Empires, Fallout, The Outer Worlds, Grounded, Sea of Thieves, State of Decay, Ori, Diablo... all of that, exclusive to Xbox, would have been an immense pull. Those are big names.
I say this as someone who has played quite a few of these titles on competing platforms. It would still have been good for MS , even if I may have missed out personally.
The Xbox Series failed long before any of those games went to other consoles.
That only works if you can get people to buy into the platform. Otherwise you are just missing sales.
A game like elder scrolls will sale on any console but how much sales are you gonna forgo and is it gonna really move consoles. Remember, its not a true exclusive anyway so all you are really doing is losing sales by blocking the top 2 consoles
But wouldn't you agree that it is the exclusives that get people to buy the platform in the first place? Exclusives are the flavor, otherweise it is just another plastic box like the other. I'm talking about a long term strategy. Sure you miss sales but that argument can be made for the competitors as well. Sales are inferior to a healthy ecosystem. An ecosystem with some sort of identity. But MS sold that identity to the competition in gain of some sales, meanwhile losing the entire appeal to buy an Xbox, however.
The WiiU, N64 and Gamecube had plenty of good exclusives.
Yes, and they all had hardware limitations or bottlenecks that caused an uphill battle. Meanwhile MS builds pretty competent consoles nowadays without any major flaws. Now add a decent list of exclusives and you have a striking value proposition.
Microsoft builds good hardware, but they have an alternative problem. People hate Microsoft. I think it’s actually understated how much the average consumer doesn’t like Microsoft.
And a large part of why people dislike them is because they bought up a huge chunk of the industry. With absolutely predictable results.
If those were console exclusives i am 100% picking Xbox over Playstation.
Not sure if they would make a move as big as removing Minecraft from PS Store and the Nintendo E-Shop and ending updates for those versions like this survey question suggests, but I could absolutely see them making everything smaller than those Xbox console exclusive.
If they want Xbox to actually be competitive as a platform and not just competitive as a publisher, they need big exclusives, and things like Elder Scrolls 6, Obsidian's Fallout, Kojima's OD and Physint, Activision Halo, Forza Horizon 7, Diablo 5, the Starcraft open world shooter, Wolfenstein 3, and more besides could combined move enough Project Helix hardware to make Xbox competitive as a platform again (at least as long as there is an affordable Helix console and not just the rumored $1000+ one with specs equivalent to a high end PC from 2025, they need a mass market option, something like $700 tops).
If they make those Xbox exclusives i am 100% picking Xbox over Ps6.
They absolutely should make everything exclusive on the next Xbox if they have one unit in the helix family that's more affordable than PS6. Also start communicating clearly that once the ten years are up, no more COD on PS. If they do that Helix might not get beaten by S2 once that console is 10 years old.
The pc market is bigger than Playstation, but PlayStation would shrink a lot without:
- Bethesda, Activision and Blizzard games.
The prospect of a PS6 especially at 1.000 euro is less good if a lot of major games skip that platform but not pc and Xbox. And PlayStation doesn't have strong enough first party support to counter that unlike Nintendo. They might had it in PS4 days, but definitely not now.
Wow! I don't think they have the balls to do it, but it would be fantastic!!
Do it, Microsoft!! Sony needs the heat of competition breathing down their necks to get back to focusing on single-player!!
Begging for a billion dollar company to be steamrolled by a trillion dollar company is not the "competition" this industry needs.
Imho, Xbox needs to do something to become relevant again. If they will succeed in "steamroll" Sony is a big "????", that said.
I think it's unlikely.
Not sure how this gets you to “1 Billion Players”
Honestly, I know this is a controversial take, but I think they should make Minecraft and call of duty exclusive. They own the rights to the Ips.
I agree. CoD they cant do until 2033 but making a Minecraft sequel Xbox only would be huge. All the kids would want xboxs
So now we're back to the "is xbox better going the way of Sega and only publishing games, no console of their own, or should they attempt another Xbox 360 vs Ps3 run where they are at least trying to be #1?" People here seem really divided on the issue but for sake of consoles actually having a purpose for existing when theres pc gaming, i'd like to see the big 3 actually try to compete. Xbox hasnt had a good effort since pre xbox one era and its looking like leadership was the main problem all along.
I believe that the 1st party games that are 'truly' (halo, forza, gears for ex.) theirs should remain exclusive. Anything that was 3rd party prior to the acquisition, should remain 3rd party. New original games that are being made after the acquisition should be on the case by case basis.
Zero chance that Minecraft goes Xbox exclusive. They'd be more likely to do it with CoD and face the lawsuits than to do it with Minecraft. That's an absurd question.
Go for it I say.
A big issue a lot of people had when MS bought both Bethesda and ABK one after the other was that MS, if allowed to buy these companies with no restrictions (and did with Bethesda and basically did with ABK) is straight up removing their line up, even current onsale titles from competitors. The FTC even during ABK buyout sued for that very reason, basically they didn't like the fact MS after buying Bethesda kept the deals they had in place but the very first few games they released were on Xbox, so they thought they'd do the same after with ABK.
And within their right, they can do exactly that right now. They have no obligation, outside of contracts for CoD (which is already 2.5 years in), to have any of their new or current games on competing services, this includes Steam. They could take it all now and make it Xbox only.
They don't and won't because $$$. While the PC, Nintendo and PS have a vastly bigger market than Xbox does, it makes sense for them to keep what were 3rd party publishers as 3rd party publishers.
But for their own games? Halo, Gears, Forza? No, those should be exclusive else (like I'm sure they've noticed) in the end, people will just play them on PC. Steam get 30% and MS are happy about it?
I really don't see the point in doubling back after they were starting to go the publisher route, they did that because it was more profitable and I don't see that changing anytime soon, their brand lost value but they'd be fighting an uphill battle trying to win it back. And as much as diehard fans felt "left out" it was actually the more goodwill move, why would anyone that isn't already a fan see it as a positive thing? At best they'd buy an Xbox begrudingly.
And realistically I think they would get in some serious shit if they took down Minecraft from other platforms, not putting it on future platforms is more acceptable but removing it would be really low.
1st, CoD isn't their choice... They have contacts and regulatory agreements dictating it's multiplat status.
2nd, what is the actual impact of this move? Money. Like other publishers, the logic of multiplat releases is premised on money. Sony and MS used to regularly pay 3PP for exclusivity because it's a money losing business strategy. The price of MS's big 3PP acquisitions was based on their multiplat publishing market (+perceived value to MS +acquisition premium), so dragging that content and further studio output to exclusivity is destroying that value before you can even think of any upside.
So either MS is going to indefinitely subsidize the lost income (which could just subsidize Xbox consoles, or subsidize games to be cheaper on Xbox console etc) or they have to reduce expenditures... Less games, maybe even less updates for existing games... With the problem being that tends to further reduce revenue. The larger multiplat market enables more content production even for Xbox console owners.
I don't see them point in going around buying big 3PP to in turn sabotage their value. Just creating new exclusive games and new studios from scratch would at least not involve buying expected future revenue from multiplat game IP just to destroy it.
Are they in it to win or just be 2nd or 3rd place? Because their strategies clearly havent been working and Asha is trying to correct course. We'll see how things play out but the multi plat fight has been a losing one. Even Sony gave up on their much less enthusiastic attempt, probably because they too saw it wasnt worth it.
These are two completely different situations. PlayStation abandoned a multiplatform strategy because it yielded hardly any returns, whereas Xbox has to do it because, otherwise, the division will incur even greater losses. If Microsoft—as they have stated—no longer intends to cross-subsidize the Xbox, then Xbox must release its games on multiple platforms.
And just a reminder: until recently, all those Xbox games were exclusive—but nobody wanted an Xbox anyway.
None of the bethesda/activision games were 1st party. I dont know where you are getting that information. Their lack of exclusives were to the point that even halo forza and other traditionally 1st party titles were releasing on playstation (to varying levels of success at that).
But halo, forza and gears.
