{"id":1598484,"date":"2026-06-05T17:03:32","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T17:03:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/9E2iGjaXPMRvwqnwze2tVT"},"modified":"2026-06-05T17:03:32","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T17:03:32","slug":"the-console-wars-are-back-on-baby-xbox-ceo-says-we-have-to-be-very-thoughtful-about-console-exclusivity-on-future-releases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/the-console-wars-are-back-on-baby-xbox-ceo-says-we-have-to-be-very-thoughtful-about-console-exclusivity-on-future-releases\/","title":{"rendered":"The console wars are back on, baby: Xbox CEO says ‘we have to be very thoughtful’ about console exclusivity on future releases"},"content":{"rendered":"
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“Well, I guess we won the console war<\/a>,” PC Gamer’s Evan Lahti declared back in 2020. It was a time of clear skies and hope: Microsoft had embraced Steam, Sony was bringing first-party games to PC, and we were all waving flags and pounding vodka shots atop silent tanks in Red Square. Metaphorically, anyway.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

But now it looks like the fight is back on. Sony is backing away<\/a> from its strategy of releasing PlayStation exclusives on PC, and now Microsoft CEO Asha Sharma has hinted that Xbox is reconsidering its own approach to exclusives.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

“We’re the number two publisher in the world and in order to be a great publisher, you must have your games reach large audiences to play,” Asha said during a recent Bloomberg interview<\/a>. “At the same time, we’re increasingly becoming a platform. In order to be a platform, you must have exclusive content and services. And so, we’re looking at that very closely. I think that we have to be very thoughtful about each title on how we want to think about it and learn from similar cases in the industry, and that’s what we’re doing.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Like the unceremonious axing of the ‘This is an Xbox’<\/a> marketing campaign, Sharma’s statement is a clear repudiation of former Xbox president Sarah Bond, who said flat-out in October 2025 that “the idea of locking [games] to one store or one device is antiquated<\/a> for most people.” <\/p>\n

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A potential refocus on exclusives is also obviously more about Xbox’s dealings with PlayStation than PC. Shortly after Bond’s comment, Microsoft announced its Halo remake for PlayStation, and man, it was over<\/em><\/a>: As PC Gamer’s Morgan Park put it at the time, “Though he shared joint custody with PC gaming in moments, Master Chief was Xbox … His olive green armor practically was <\/em>the console’s logo in superhuman form. Now he’s just the guy from Halo.”<\/p>\n

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