While the console wars have provided healthy competition over the years, it’s fair to say game exclusivity is rarely a good thing for users in the long run. The truth, of course, is that exclusive games have always driven console sales, and Sony and Microsoft have instead millions in game studios for exactly that reason. According to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, though, he apparently doesn’t enjoy exclusive game ecosystems and wants to eliminate console-exclusive games. Curious.
Microsoft CEO Wants To End Console-Exclusive Game Wars Between Xbox and PS
In an interview published on IGN, Nadella claims that he wants to get rid of the console-exclusive games:
“If it was up to me, I would love to get rid of the entire sort of exclusives on consoles, but that’s not up to me to define. “Especially as a low share player in the console market that the dominant player there has defined market competition using exclusives, and so that’s the world we live in… I have no love for that world.”
Of course, Nadella as Microsoft’s CEO is separate to Phil Spencer’s Xbox division, and he’s entitled to his opinion on the matter of exclusivity. Still, there’s no getting away from the fact that this all reads rather strangely when we consider that Microsoft (via Xbox) has recently bought a bunch of studios and made many of its high-profile games exclusive. It seems a little counter-intuitive for the CEO to then go and suggest console exclusivity isn’t something he’s in favor of. Perhaps this is damage control given the seemingly increasing amount of pushback against Microsoft’s aggression acquisitions in recent years? The company has only just had its attempted takeover of Activision halted in its track, after all.
Contrary to popular belief, console manufacturers typically lose money with each console sale. The business strategy is actually based on eating production costs to make money on each game sale that comes to the platform. That’s why exclusives matter; not least because must-play titles attract new audiences to a hardware manufacturer’s ecosystem as well. Exclusivity seems set to remain a huge part of the games industry business moving forward, and any suggestion to the contrary feels like fluff.