Xbox has spent the past few years bringing its games to other platforms – a strategy that would've once seemed unthinkable to those of us who remember when a console was judged by the quality of its exclusive games. For Xbox president Sarah Bond, however, the idea of exclusives is looking downright "antiquated" as the biggest games in the world are increasingly looking like platforms in their own right.
Asked about exclusive games in an interview with Mashable, Bond says, "We're really seeing people evolve way past that. The biggest games in the world are available everywhere. You look at Call of Duty, you look at Minecraft, you look at Fortnite, you look at Roblox. Like, that's actually what's really driving community in gaming. That's where people gather [and] they have experiences, and the idea of locking it to one store or one device is antiquated for most people. You want to be able to play with your friends anywhere regardless of what they're on."
It's easy to read a bit of defensiveness into what Bond's saying here as Xbox continues to not produce exclusive games, but she's really just reiterating the company's long-stated strategy. Xbox is increasingly positioning itself as less of a platform to play games on, and more of a service to play games through. Exclusives don't really help the argument in that case.
And yes, in 2025, it's games like Fortnite, COD, Roblox, and Minecraft that are driving the industry, and the stats on the titles people are actually playing every month back that up. You and I – people reading and writing for traditional gaming media outlets, respectively – might still prefer the now-old-school 'games as a product' or, gasp, 'games as art' approach, but those games are small potatoes compared with the live service whales.
But then, is Xbox offering anything particularly compelling for games you can play on any other platform anyway? Cloud streaming? The promise of Fortnite bonuses in Xbox Game Pass? Devices like the ROG Xbox Ally X? Bond leans into the handheld as an example of what Xbox is trying to do: "We're really leaning into that with this experience because it just opens up another way for you to play. As does cloud, as does PC, as does the consoles that we all own and have in our living room."
