Xbox embraces exclusives again (and why Nintendo may have played the long game brilliantly)

Joe Skrebels: XBOX Games Showcase 2026 Recap: The Return of Exclusives, World Premieres, and Anniversary Hardware

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.

Combine this with the recent announcement from Sony that they will no longer be bringing their single-player games to PC, and as a consumer it does feel like we're exiting a golden era of gaming where we were able to play pretty much everything wherever we wanted. However, I do appreciate why this era had to end for these companies.

Sony

Sony’s drive to get their games on PC was an attempt to expand their player base. Way more people play games on PC than on the consoles, so getting their games in front of those gamers was a net win for them. There's of course some overlap, but a lot of PC gamers are never going to buy a console, so Sony probably thought they were simply expanding their customer base.

However Sony never went fully in on treating PC the same as PlayStation. Their games, such as Death Stranding 2 and Spider-Man, all released first on PS5, with the PC version coming anywhere from six months to several years later. I would suspect this was in part to try and drive sales of PS5 consoles. Yes you can play Death Stranding 2 on PC but you're going to have to wait a while. Maybe you want to get a PS5 to play earlier. I don't think this strategy is fundamentally flawed but I do think it led to some of the sales disappointments that Sony started to see with their PC releases. The first few games they released on PC sold incredibly well. I would suspect largely because of the novelty and surprise of it. Sony had never done this before and getting their games on PC was really exciting. However once it became the norm, the novelty wore off, and now these were just year-plus old games coming to PC, which wasn't as exciting.

Another wrinkle was the direction that Microsoft was going with its consoles. The ROG Xbox Ally X is already on the market and is an Xbox in name that can play games from any PC game store, which means it can play all the PlayStation Studio games as well. The rumors are strong that this is the direction Microsoft is going with their next home console as well. I'm sure Sony wasn't super thrilled about the idea of people being able to boot up PlayStation games on an Xbox.

I'm an audience of one so take this as a data point only. As someone who has a PC and a PlayStation 5, this era has basically made it so I play my PlayStation 0% of the time because I can play everything on my PC. While it is annoying to wait for the PlayStation Studios games to come to PC, it's not the end of the world and I can usually wait.

Microsoft

From the start of this generation of consoles, Microsoft has been in a place where they treat every first-party game as an Xbox and PC release. I don't own an Xbox Series X but I can still play every single Microsoft Game Studio release the day it comes out on my PC, and I have been able to do that since 2020. For me that's been great but it has also meant that I have precisely zero interest in even considering buying an Xbox console.

Meanwhile Microsoft's recent move to multi-platform across all of their games, including their crown jewel, Halo, has meant that basically no one has any reason to buy an Xbox console. Seriously, why would you buy an Xbox today?

• PC gets all the Microsoft games, almost all the Sony games, and all the PC games
• PS5 gets all the Microsoft games and all the Sony games
• Xbox gets all the Microsoft games, that's it

If you want everything, a PC gets it all and if you want a console experience then the PS5 gets all the Microsoft games plus all the Sony exclusives as well. Why get an Xbox when it's the only one that doesn't get anything unique you can't get on the other ones? That can make sense if you're not really interested in owning a hardware platform and you just want to be a software publisher. Clearly Microsoft is reconsidering this position, though, as the lock down the hatches.

Nintendo

People like to say Nintendo is not competing with Sony and Microsoft. I agree they have a totally different strategy, but I still think they're in the mix. What's notable about Nintendo is that they've been remarkably consistent in their release strategy: Nintendo exclusives never, ever touch other platforms.

Meanwhile 2017's Switch console was so remarkably successful that they've drawn tons of third parties back to the platform as well, so now you get all your Nintendo games on a Switch (or Switch 2), and basically every third party game that can fit on the portable console comes there as well. Yes, even Microsoft games, but not Sony ones.

Funnily enough, as Sony and Microsoft have fought the spec wars (something Nintendo has not been fighting since 2006's Wii), they've put themselves in a position where their new consoles cost an absolute shit ton of money in today's environment, pushing them outside the window most people are willing to spend on a game console. Meanwhile Nintendo's Switch 2 is still pretty expensive and isn't as powerful, but its cost hasn't gotten to the levels of the other competitors. Today a Switch 2 gets you all of Nintendo's games, most third party games (including sports games which were absent for literal decades), Call of Duty, and even some PC games that don't come to the other consoles. It still doesn't get you everything, but it's a pretty compelling package at a price point that feels closer to what consoles are meant to cost.