Mass layoffs, price hikes on the Xbox Series X/S, gutting popular developers – to say that Xbox has run the gamut of unpopular decisions lately would be an understatement. The decision to make titles like Gears of War: E-Day and Clockwork Revolution exclusive is another, though it came across as more curious than anything else.
That’s because the hardware business hasn’t really been booming for some time. Still, the suddenness caught many off guard, and chief strategy officer Matthew Ball says that was the intent. “It’s true that the news was a surprise to a lot of people in the company; that’s because we wanted it to be a surprise to players,” he told GamesRadar.
Also seemingly denying that it was a last-minute decision, he notes it was made “very early. Asha believes that to build a platform, you must have exclusive services and software – in this case, games. And so to return our platform to consistent growth, we need a reliable pipeline of exclusive games.”
Naturally, there’s been some confusion about this approach because titles like Fable, Forza Horizon 6, and so on are still coming to other platforms. While you can expect “large live-service titles” to remain multiplatform, Xbox isn’t going the PlayStation route by making all its single-player titles exclusive to PS5.
As chief content officer Matt Booty notes, “I wouldn’t overly fixate on single-player. I think that’s a good rule of thumb, but it certainly isn’t something that’s carved in stone.” Both reasons would explain why State of Decay 3 and Senua – whose studios have since been sold off by Xbox – were announced for PlayStation.
With Grand Theft Auto 6 on the horizon and console stock reportedly insufficient to keep up with demand, there may be a knock-on effect that benefits Xbox. Time will tell, but with the division hitting the big reset button and promising even more layoffs in the current fiscal year, we probably won’t see any change until much later down the line.
In the meantime, Gears of War: E-Day is scheduled to launch on October 8th for Xbox Series X/S and PC. Fable is out on February 23rd, 2027 for the same alongside PS5, while Clockwork Revolution is releasing sometime next year.
