Following on from the announcement that Gears of War: E-Day and Clockwork Revolution will be Xbox console exclusive, Xbox execs have made some clarifying statements about what this means going forward.
Speaking with Gamertag Radio Xbox Chief Content Officer Matt Booty explained that this is not a hard and fast rule, but much more nuanced.
“We know that exclusives are important, that’s why we’ve got Gears [of War: E-Day] coming in 2026, Clockwork [Revolution] in 2027.” Booty said, but also noted that “If we’ve promised something to players already, we are going to honour that promise.,” Booty stated, adding exclusivity will be determined on a case-by-case basis.
This follows up the statement on Xbox Wire that, “As part of our focus on the return of XBOX, we also announced that Gears of War: E-Day and Clockwork Revolution will be XBOX console exclusives. These are not timed exclusives. Games already announced for multiplatform releases will stick to that plan – we’re committed to investing in and growing XBOX both on console and beyond.”
We can break this down into three buckets:
- Live service and multiplayer-first games will all be coming to PS5 in addition to Xbox and PC.
- Any game already announced and confirmed for PlayStation 5 will still be coming to PS5.
- Everything else will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
Got that? Let’s look at some examples.
Call of Duty will obviously never now be an exclusive – and it’s not clear how this statement relates to Activision anyway – given that it’s heavily multiplayer focussed and has long-standing promises about multi-platform availability.
Halo: Campaign Evolved and Fable were previously announced for PS5, and so they will still come to PlayStation. For the future of Halo, Microsoft will need to decide if it’s a live service or multiplayer-first series, but there’s now precedent for a remake or remaster to then not have a cross-platform sequel – Gears Reloaded and E-Day.
State of Decay 3, which is heavily co-op and online similar to a Grounded 2 makes sense to be cross-platform, but then Senua, which is a single-player action-adventure game would surely have been a prime candidate to be Xbox exclusive. But maybe that gets an exclusion because the first game launched first for PlayStation 4?
And, look, The Elder Scrolls VI will be on PlayStation because they want it to sell bucket loads after the middling reception to Starfield, but now there’s a seed of doubt about it, isn’t there?
In general, I think I’m in favour of Microsoft going back to having exclusives. It does feel odd having Halo and Gears on PlayStation, but there do need to be good reasons for people to stay with Xbox as a platform (or PC) for it to remain viable. So this is a good move for the platform as a whole, but let’s not pretend that it isn’t just like in 2023 when the former executive team struggled to explain what the plan really was.
Source: Xbox, Gamertag Radio via VGC
stefhutch20
I know some of them had already been announced for PS5, but it speaks volumes that the majority of the Xbox-published games they showed will still be multi-platform. I’d also argue that saying Clockwork Revolution and Gears of War: E-Day aren’t timed exclusives doesn’t completely discount them from ever coming to PS5 – it just means there are currently no plans to do so. For example, I assume Starfield wasn’t thought of as a timed exclusive when Microsoft first purchased Bethesda, until they suddenly decided to release it on PS5 after two and a half years – otherwise I’d imagine the delay wouldn’t have been as long. It’ll definitely be interesting to see how long this renewed commitment to exclusives lasts.