Microsoft’s pivot to multiplatform gaming has hit a new and irreversible milestone with the news that the next Halo game, and each one that follows in the future, will be coming to PlayStation. To defend this seismic shift in a decades-old strategy, the executives in charge of Xbox have been throwing shade at the notion of exclusivity and reframing the console war in broader terms.
On the eve of announcing Halo: Campaign Evolved for PS5, head of Microsoft content and studios Matt Booty reportedly told The New York Times that today’s gamers don’t really care which devices they play games on. “Our biggest competition isn’t another console,” he said. “We are competing more and more with everything from TikTok to movies.”
“We are all seeking to meet people where they are,” Booty added.
It’s a sentiment Microsoft has been pushing ever since it’s “everything is an Xbox” marketing pitch began rolling out late last year. Having failed at being the number one console to game on, Xbox is pivoting to trying to reach players wherever they already are, whether that’s on PS5 and Switch 2 or TVs and smartphones.
Microsoft calls Xbox exclusives ‘antiquated’
“I want Xbox to act like every other form of entertainment, where you can access it wherever you want, wherever you are,” Xbox President Sarah Bond told Mashable last week.
She continued,
You look at Call of Duty, you look at Minecraft, you look at Fortnite, you look at Roblox. That’s actually what’s really driving community in gaming. That’s where people gather and they have experiences. And the idea of locking it to one store or one device is antiquated for most people. You want to be able to play with your friends anywhere, regardless of what they’re on. And we’re really leaning into that with this experience.
This isn’t the first time someone at Microsoft has poured cold water on the idea of keeping games like Halo exclusive. CEO Satya Nadella was critical of the role they play in defining the gaming landscape back during his 2023 FTC trial testimony over the acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
“If it was up to me I would love to get rid of the entire exclusives on consoles, but that’s not for me to define especially as a low share player in the console market,” he said at the time. “The dominant player there [Sony] has defined market competition using exclusives, so that’s the world we live in. I have no love for that world.”
Halo: CE remake vs. TikTok
Why has Xbox changed if Sony hasn’t? While Microsoft execs champion the company’s new “play anywhere” philosophy, Bloomberg reports that mandates for much steeper profit margins at Xbox are the main driver of this multiplatform sea change. After all, how does putting an Unreal Engine 5 remake of a 25-year-old game on PS5 help Microsoft convince people to stop scrolling on their phones and pick up a controller instead?
If Booty’s line about TikTok sounds familiar, it’s because it’s borrowed from something ex-Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime said seven years ago. “My competitive set is much bigger than my direct competitors in Sony and Microsoft,” he said back before he retired. “I compete for time. When I do that, I have to be creative and innovative in order to win that battle.”
Nintendo weathered the threat from Netflix by doing the opposite of Microsoft: doubling-down on exclusive games and convenient dedicated gaming hardware. The tech giant now appears to be taking the inverse approach: multiplatform games and more expensive devices.
The ROG Xbox Ally X is a $1,000 handheld that Microsoft keeps hinting is a blueprint for its future hardware. Bond also recently said the next-gen Xbox will be “very premium” and very high-end, even though its games will seemingly all be available everywhere else. We’ll see how each of those approaches pans out over the next console generation.
