@Tasuki It's 100% the right move to trim the fat. These studios make smaller games that don't sell well.

People are going to freak out, but Ninja Theory, Double Fine and Compulsion haven't produced hit games.
Microsoft is paying for these entire studios and hundreds of employees and that adds up. For smaller games like these studios create they could just money hat the game itself and spend far less money than having to pay for entire studios to operate for 5-6 years between games.

Compulsion and Double Fine are my guesses. Neither would be a shock to be honest.
Compulsion did South Of Midnight after 5 years and it didn't do very well and was avg on Metacritic.
Double Fine did Kiln and Keeper but both were massive flops and they are very niche. Can easily buy smaller titles to fit into Game Pass a lot cheaper than buying entire studios.

Louise O'Connor should have been gone ages ago, she was behind the failed Everwild, couldn't get a game out in over 8 years and somehow got promoted!

@MrStark I mean 35-40 million Series consoles have sold. There's hundreds of millions of PC and access through cloud gaming. How is that not enough to make exclusives? That's far more screens than Switch 2's 20 million sold or even 90 million PS5's sold. Yet, they both get exclusives.

The fact is every game they were making was being made for PS5 as well. They can't afford to take a loss by canning 8 PS5 versions that are finished or almost finished. They are already taking losses on Gears and Clockwork.
In the future it's obvious Halo won't be on PlayStation and only Service based games will be. Next Fable will be exclusive as will a lot of other games.
Sony is only giving PS owners 1-2 first party exclusives a year currently anyway, I think MS can match or beat that and still have a good amount of multiplatform games from Activision.

@Skinny-Pete Switch 2 has only 20 million sold yet is viable? Xbox Series consoles are at 35 million or more by all accounts. How is that not viable? lol

Just a quick reminder that Sony uses their 30% cut from sales of Xbox games on PlayStation to do stuff like this. Most people don't care about Play Anywhere either, as PC gamers tend to stick to PC and console gamers stick to console.

@Kaloudz Halo and Gears are multiplayer and there's no way they should be on PlayStation. Forza just proved it's a console seller, so why put it on PlayStation and get nothing in return?

@Tasuki Phil already took away exclusives, why dump him if you're going to do the same thing that already wasn't working?
She clearly says exclusives are important...lol

@RadioHedgeFund Who hasn't played Halo before? Putting your mascot on the competitions platform which is using their 30% cut to buy exclusive content to keep away from Xbox owners isn't smart. The biggest problem with Halo is Halo. It hasn't been good enough to keep players active regardless of platform.

@Millionski Sony is making enough mistakes that any competent leadership could take advantage of them!

Phil Spencer was so full of crap!
The only time they've had console selling games was holiday 2021 and Xbox broke all console sales records thanks to Flight Sim, Halo Infinite and Forza Horizon 5 all launching back to back to back!
Now, a great 90+ rated Forza Horizon 6 is selling consoles because it is amazing!
All of these games should be console exclusive!

EXCLUSIVES OR WE RIOT

@RadioHedgeFund Why would they bring a dead games multiplayer to PlayStation and Switch?

Terrible timing. This game should have launched as an Xbox exclusive last year. We know the original delay was strictly to work on the PS5 version....

@Skinny-Pete I own every Xbox and over 1000 games on my Series X.
Since Feb 2024's "just 4 games" lie however, I've stayed away from buying games on Xbox. I'm waiting to see what they announce in terms of exclusives in June.

@ILuvGames PC is littered with cheaters and hackers and people stealing games. There's rumors Microsoft might not even allow other stores on the platform because it's counterproductive. There's no such thing as a hybrid, either it's an open system or closed.

I'm all for them keeping certain things on pc exclusive as well. Who on a console gives a crap about Flight Sim or Age of Empires? Just like PC gamers obviously didn't give a crap about Hellblade 2, South Of Midnight, Gears, Avowed, Outer Worlds 2, Doom, Halo, Forza Motorsport and 99% of their games.

@Hammers72 That handheld has sold poorly, very poorly. Majority of Xbox games aren't selling well on PC either. Why keep supporting a platform that isn't buying the product? lol

Without Xbox exclusives it's pointless.

@Coletrain They should stay away from Nintendo because they get NOTHING in return. I'd stay away from PC with certain things too, because it's proven the PC crowd isn't buying the likes of South Of Midnight, Avowed, Hellblade 2, Outer Worlds 2, Indiana Jones, Gears, Halo, Fable in the past and most other games.

all Xbox games need to be exclusive, especially Halo, Fable, Forza, Gears. I think Activision games being multiplatform should be enough to fund everything else being exclusive.
You want Xbox back? It needs to be able to compete with kick ass exclusives!

@Mazitron Xbox as a console has never been more bleak. They have some decent and good content finally, but it's all going to the PS5 and even Switch/Switch 2. That's no way to keep your hardware alive and thriving, especially when Sony just pulled back to exclusives and Nintendo never left them.

Why would people buy an Xbox when you can get both Xbox and PS5 exclusives on a PS5 and only Xbox games on an Xbox?

This game reminded me of an Xbox 360 game because of the limited and repetitive nature of it. Also, it only sold like 20k copies on Nintendo and PS platforms combined. I bet they lost money on ports.

There's no way Helix as a rumored $1200+ machine is the main reason Sony changed strategy.
We know the PC numbers on Sony's games didn't make much money. We know their PC gamers were getting pirated by the millions.
We know Sony's PC games were getting a lot of bad press due to how poorly the games were running on PC.
There was no upside to putting games on PC anymore.

I'm sure Microsoft originally thought Helix running Steam was genius because it would eliminate exclusives, but all it did was kill any reason to buy anything from the Xbox Store.....

Playground Games has carried Xbox for 2 generations now. The only consistently amazing series they have.

Mentioning the PS6 like it won't at least have the option is insane. Millions of people buy physical media and backwards compatibility with the past 2 generations where hundreds of millions of physical discs were sold. I guarantee the PS6 at least has the option to put in the disc drive.

@SMJ I don't care if you believe me, and there's no Xbox exclusives. Anything that comes out on Xbox currently will come out on PlayStation as well. There needs to be full on exclusives and they need to advertise into that.

@johnedwin There's millions of people who don't like PC gaming at all and will never game on a PC (Like me).
Exclusive games, great games that people actually want to play. Good pricing, go back to getting 3rd party deals and content.
There are ways they can compete because Sony is literally crapping the bed themselves! Any competent company could have beat them this gen.

I have almost 500,000 Gamerscore, have had every Xbox day one. I was buying between 20-30 new games per year and subscribed to Game Pass Ultimate.
Since they did the "just 4 games" thing in Feb of 2024, I have bought 0 games on Xbox and no longer have Game Pass. Without exclusive games, there's absolutely NO REASON to own an Xbox console.

89 is my guess. I think we saw some reviewers tired of the same old formula with Horizon 5. I think 6 will still score amazingly well, but now that they're co-developing for PlayStation as well, I think it waters it down a bit too.

Black Flag is awesome. I'll definitely be playing it because it's 100% better than any recent Assassins Creed game.
I love gaming, but most new games aren't great, that's why they keep bringing back the older games.

Why was it never NOT at the forefront to begin with? You literally have people buying a $400-$600 console and many paying hundreds a year on top of that for Game Pass and to play online. They should have been treated like kings from the start!

They must have lost MILLIONS of subscribers when they raised the prices last year. Old leadership should be embarrassed.

@Sol4ris I mean he helped lead the attack that killed Xbox in the first place. Those early PS4 moves were brilliant and he's been right a lot.
Also, we have no clue how many people sub to Game Pass, but Asha Sharma's recent comments suggest a lot un-subbed when they raised prices 50% last year.
Game Pass is clearly going the opposite direction now.

It just doesn't look good or fun. Not to be a downer, but this won't last a year.

@FuzzieGinge88 Majority of the games they put on PlayStation have utterly failed to sell. Only 2 games sold well. Some games probably didn't even make the money back from the cost to port.

Very simple, everything should be exclusive except Activision games. Let COD and all the Activision games FUND your Xbox exclusives. That's how it should have been in the first place.

These poor sales for 96% of Xbox games on PlayStation prove that it wasn't worth killing the Xbox brand for. The only GREAT game Xbox has made is Forza Horizon 5 this generation and so it sold well. Just goes to show you need GREAT games first and foremost, but there's just not a lot of room on PlayStation gamers play list for 10+ Xbox published games a year in addition to what they already have.

@HonestHick
The ability to turn off Quick Resume was talked about by Phil Spencer 4 years ago, but was confirmed to be done in a 2 week time period after Sharma took over.

The Achievement thing was talked about by Phil all the time, just like everything else and yet nothing was ever done. A 14 month period where no console updates were released.

He killed Xbox exclusivity.
He sat by and didn't speak up when they add DRM to Xbox One.
He lied about "Just 4 games".
He lied and said Bethesda was about exclusives where Game Pass exists.
He lied when he said not all Xbox games would go to PC.
He lied when he said Xbox games would only go to Windows.
He said Phantom Dust remake is still being made (seriously, he never admitted it was cancelled).
He said Sony uses their share of Xbox game profits sold on PlayStation to kill Xbox, yet still puts every game on PS?
He came up with Game Pass, which effectively taught people to NOT buy games.
Raised prices twice on Xbox in the past year.
Tried to raise game prices to $80 last year.
Raised Game Pass prices 3x in 2 years including a 50% raise last year.
Cancelled Fan Fest.
The Activision deal was PHIL SPENCERS IDEA.
He promised all Activision games would come to Game Pass, still hasn't happened.
Cancelled so many games....Perfect Dark, Fable Legends, Scalebound, Everwild, Blackbird and more!
Closed a ton of studios.

Xbox One did 60 million in sales, Xbox Series X/S less than half of that because Microsoft gave up 2 years into the generation.

@themightyant They stayed far away from mentioning exclusives.

As Sidious would say.......DEW IT!

@HonestHick Actually we have confirmation from the team building the updates that the original update was done in 2 weeks time. Phil hadn't done any console updates in 14 months!

Let's please stop giving him credit unless it's credit for ruining the brand.

Everything but Activision games should be exclusive to Xbox. If people want to play badly enough they'll get an Xbox or game on PC, cloud or whatever else. Xbox should absolutely have exclusive games.

@duncanwarrior99 Because it's quite obvious they lost a lot of subscribers when they raised prices 50%.

It's nice to finally get console updates again after the last one was like 14 months ago. Why did it take so long to do things for console owners though?
It really makes Phil and Sarah look bad and even more so like liars because they kept saying how important console is, but spent no resources on consoles!

It's funny because people swore up and down Phil and Sarah cared about the console and console gamers, yet in 1 month Asha Sharma has done more updates and features than those two did in the past 2 years!
I'm not sold on Xbox just yet, really depends on if they bring back exclusive games, but at least they are acting like console gamers exist again.

The problem is perception. Cheap phone games have ads and the quality of those games is horrible. Microsoft is trying to make premium games that feel and play premium. Having an ad based tier makes those games feel less than they are and could make the games appear cheap to other gamers.

That's cool that it is your opinion but I disagree 100%!
With XBLA, we got the best of the best in terms of indies and they had a seal of quality about them. Now, anyone can publish a game and there's so much shovelware and spam it's hard to find the actual decent indies.

@darylb24 The problem with that is that Microsoft is all in with AI and couldn't care less about Xbox. They are better heavily on AI and AI alone.