You're The Xbox Boss And Need To Figure Out Exclusivity, What Decision Are You Making?

In recent years, Xbox has veered away from exclusive games massively, to the point where Forza, Gears and even Halo later this year are being stripped of their console exclusivity. This move — at least in the public-facing world and below Satya Nadella — seemed to lie largely at the feet of previous leaders Phil Spencer and Sarah Bond, but now, new boss Asha Sharma has some decisions to make regarding the future of this whole strategy, and we want to know what you'd do in her shoes.

You wake up tomorrow morning and it's you that Phil Spencer has given the Xbox keys to. You've quickly gauged fan opinion and can see that exclusive games on your console are a very hot topic amongst the Xbox faithful - they want to know where this all stands moving forward and whether they can expect exclusive games to return in some form. Well, what decision are you making?

There are a few ways you could go from here, to be fair. You could simply carry on the path that Phil and Sarah started; pushing Xbox as a brand out to pretty much every platform on the planet, taking all of your iconic games and franchises with you. It nets you huge profit gains in the short term, and helps balance the books when you've got so many studios — and ultimately employees — to manage.

Alternatively, you could pull things back a little bit. You could pick and choose which games go where, but potentially cause some confusion along the way. Do you keep Xbox's biggest franchises exclusive? Do you only send out what would be the best-sellers to other platforms; keeping some smaller and more unique titles on Xbox Series X|S? Do you simply make all Bethesda and Activision Blizzard games multiplatform? At the end of the day, lots of their back catalogues are already on other systems anyway.

Of course, you could go nuclear and retreat on the multiplatform push entirely. Make everything exclusive again, keep your first-party content beholden to your own ecosystem and see if the huge swathes of content you're now releasing can bring players in. It's a bold move but it's worked before, and has been the blueprint for console success for many decades. The only problem is, your predecessors have already started turning a pretty big ship in a totally different direction - and you have those legal pledges to uphold regarding Activision content.

This is all hypothetical of course, and for now, Xbox proper isn't exactly being open with where it goes next - and to be fair, Asha Sharma is probably still figuring all that out. But, if those decisions fell at your feet, what would you do? Would you go one of the three ways we've presented here, or do you have a totally different idea for Xbox and its in-house content in future?

What Decision Do You Make Regarding Xbox Exclusives?

Give us a pick in the poll up above and talk to us about your business plan in the comments below!