The Xbox One’s exclusives situation is extremely dire (the Nintendo Switch is going to have more exclusives in its first nine months on the market than the Xbox One will have had in 2016 and 2017 put together), situation made even worse by the delay of Crackdown 3 into next year– but Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg doesn’t seem to think that.
He, in fact, not only believes that Xbox has the biggest exclusives, but also that Microsoft is hitting fans non stop with compelling exclusive content.
“People pick Xbox because we have the biggest franchises, the biggest exclusives, whether you are a fan of Halo, or Gears of War, or Forza,” Greenberg said during Microsoft’s Gamescom panel yesterday. “This Holiday, personally, I’m really excited, [because] Xbox One will be the only console where you will be able to play Forza 7, Cuphead, and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, which we are super excited about. Also timed with the Xbox One X launch we have Super Lucky’s Tale coming, that’s exclusive. But it doesn’t stop there, because into the Spring, we have Sea of Thieves, State of Decay 2, and Crackdown 3. So we’re basically non stop hitting our fans with more and more exclusive titles, so there will be tons of great games to play.”
Okay, so let’s start with some observations there- of the exclusive games still to come this year, only two are retail exclusives, making for a grand total of three retail exclusives for Xbox One from Microsoft for the entire year. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is a major win- but is it a permanent exclusive for Xbox?
This is without getting into the fact that the three major Spring 2018 exclusives he named are all games that were due out this year- some were due out last year- and they keep getting delayed. Are we actually sure that they will not be delayed again next year? Even if they are not, is it an achievement to finally launch games Xbox announced as many as four years ago by the time these games do launch?
Greenberg went on to say that the Xbox One X’s true appeal is in the fact that it will have the best playing and looking versions of all the games on the market- this, at least, is a stance that is hard to take issue with.
“The great thing as a gamer is no matter if you’re a fan of RPGs, or racers, or shooters, no matter what kind of game you like, these games are going to look and play better on Xbox One X,” he said. And this is true. For all first party Microsoft games (such as they are), and third party multiplatform games, the Xbox One X is always going to have the best version- the question is, will that be enough to make people spring on a $500 console? That is something that remains to be seen.