Xbox Needs To Pick A Lane, And Soon

In a recent newsletter, Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier noted that Microsoft’s release strategy is all over the place to the point where even within Bethesda, there are three different release types happening at once. Starfield is Xbox only and as of yet, has stayed Xbox only. Indiana Jones will release first on Xbox and months later on PS5. DOOM: The Dark Ages is also launching on PS5 simultaneously.

It is, for lack of a better term, a mess.

At this point, Microsoft needs to simply pick a lane, and one singular release strategy, even if it’s not the one fans want to hear.

There is no reversion possible now. Pandora’s Box is open and Microsoft has demonstrated they are willing to share really any game that would have formerly been exclusive with even their oldest rivals like PlayStation. They are not simply going to walk that back and in some cases, like Call of Duty, they cannot walk that back. The same is true for Overwatch and Diablo at Blizzard, which of course aren’t going to be stripped from PlayStation.

The strategy now has to be one of band-aid pulling. Go third party developer. Release everything on Xbox and PS5 at the same time, with of course, one main caveat, Xbox players get all these games on Game Pass day one. PlayStation players have to buy them. I think that’s as good as you’re going to get, given where things are now.

There is little point trying to crawl back toward Sony in console sales. What was previously a 2:1 ratio in Sony’s favor as of late may be closer to 5:1, according to analysts. Even Phil Spencer admits there’s just no competing on that front anymore.

That doesn’t mean Microsoft has to stop making hardware. Sure, the PS5 plan will further erode console sales but that’s a moot point now. If you want the most convenient and likely best place to play Xbox Game Pass games, that would still be an Xbox, fundamentally. Sure, many will just buy a PS5 instead, but at this point Microsoft is so uninvested in meaningfully increasing console sales it doesn’t even matter.

Picking a strategy for all games would at least make all this less confusing. Is it giving things away to Sony? Yes, but they’re already doing that, and even games you may have imagined would stay exclusive like Fable and Elder Scrolls VI are now very much up in the air as to whether that will happen or not. As Spencer recently noticed, Microsoft’s Xbox division is very much still a business, and that’s why these decisions are being made. The unsaid part here is that hardware is essentially a non-factor and Game Pass sales are starting to hit a ceiling. So, you sell actual copies of your games on other platforms as another revenue stream.

It devalues the Xbox brand, but guess what? That’s already happened. The Xbox community has become barely a community at all recently in the wake of these confusing PlayStation announcements. What was once the idea that Xbox was buying devs to revive the console and create a slate to compete with Sony’s much-heralded first party studios is simply not happening. And again, there’s no going back now.

Xbox is currently caught between three or four different strategies right now. It needs to be simplified:

• Release Xbox studio games on PS5 day one at full price.
• Release Xbox studio games day one of Game Pass for “free,” with no confusing new tiers.
• Rely on the idea that the best place to play those Game Pass games is Xbox hardware, even if cloud streaming and (expensive) PCs make Game Pass playable elsewhere.
• Admit to yourself that you have sacrificed what once was a loyal community in the name of “we want everyone to play Xbox games as many places as possible” which has finally manifested in PlayStation releases. You won’t win them back, it’s done.

Is this a great path forward? No, but I would argue it’s better than whatever the hell is going on now, which is a confusing mess, hurting the brand and upsetting players anyway, and a system that is trying to have it both ways when that’s effectively no longer really possible.

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