Time is a flat circle, and in lockstep with Phil Spencer’s tenure back in 2014, new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has introduced a community suggestions box for fans to submit their ideas for the brand.
(By the way, I’m not going to feed Microsoft’s tedious engagement activities and write XBOX here, because that’s just freakin’ nonsense, isn’t it?)
Unsurprisingly, the most upvoted “idea” right now is: EXCLUSIVES. Written in all-caps. Exactly like that. They could have added some exclamation marks for emphasis.
Here’s the full suggestion, which has attracted almost 10,000 upvotes at the time of writing:
“XBOX was built off of great game exclusives, you cannot sell any consoles without a reason to buy the console compared to your competition or even sending your tentpole games over to your competitor. BRING THEM BACK PLEASE!!!”
Finally, some exclamation points! I’m a fan!!!
The “idea” has over 1,000 comments, which we briefly read through so you don’t have to. I’m going to ask Hookshot Media if I can get danger pay for doing this job, because I almost got an aneurysm wading through some of this.
I quote:
“Cancel Halo Campaign Evolved, Fable, and Gears of War E Day on PS5, Don’t bring Forza Horizon 6 to PS5, make Elderscrolls 6 and all future Xbox Studios Games only on Xbox. Sony and Nintendo have their own exclusives and Xbox needs it too. Halo and Gears on PlayStation will make people choose PS5 over Xbox every time.”
You know, I thought about fixing the punctuation in this, but it probably works better presented as is.
Microsoft has tediously said it’s “re-evaluating” its approach to exclusives, which its previous management had described as an “antiquated” concept.
The struggle for Sharma and her team is that it’s spent the past decade eroding its ecosystem to borderline irrelevance, while spending the best part of $100 billion on multiformat publishers and giving its first-party games away as part of an impossibly low-priced subscription.
Meanwhile, PS5 players have shown up in their millions to buy titles like Forza Horizon 5 and Sea of Thieves, leaving the Redmond firm between a rock and a hard place.
I suspect we’ll learn more about its approach to exclusivity later this year, but I believe it’ll be the bean counters at Microsoft who will have the final say on this – and not the fans posting on its new suggestions box.
