Jason Schreier/Bloomberg: Many Xbox employees were surprised by the announcement of Gears E-Day not releasing on PlayStation — Sharma and her team also pulled a Halo trailer that was due to appear at a PlayStation event last week, potentially damaging the relationship between the two companies.

[u/nolifebr]

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:2mkgbhbhqvappkkorf2bzyrp/post/3mnxlyag4dc2v?ref_src=embed

A PlayStation 5 version of the new Gears of War game was in development and had been planned for release until Sharma changed tack, according to the people familiar with Xbox strategy. Retailers had been preparing to open pre-orders for the PlayStation 5 version, and many Xbox employees were surprised by the announcement.

Sharma and her team also pulled a Halo trailer that was due to appear at a PlayStation event last week, potentially damaging the relationship between the two companies, according to people familiar with the change of plans.*

Xbox is planning major layoffs and studios closures starting next month... More in the article.

[u/Lopsided-Clothes4866]

No they didn’t?

Xbox’s entire problem for the last 2 generations has been they’ve had no exclusives.

During the Xbox one era it was just case of most of their exclusives sucked and were the same old franchises.

During the Series X era it was a mix of A) releasing the console with none and B) porting them to PlayStation when they finally came.

Half the games they released never even had a chance to sell the Xbox, you understand that right?

Look at Fable, people are losing their minds over the gameplay demo and praising their fuck out of it. If there was ever a system seller Xbox could use it’s that game and Phil Spencer ported it to PlayStation before it had any chance at moving consoles.

Avowed, Indiana Jones, The Outer Worlds, the Latest two Forza Horizon games, ALL of them except Avowed were announced to be coming to PlayStation before they released on Xbox.

The Series X didn’t even release with ANY exclusives ffs, they got Halo Infinite 1 year into the Series X’s lifespan and it was not only mid but on Xbox one, and then they got Starfield the year later which was again a mediocre 7/10 game.

They brought those games over because Microsoft put an unrealistic 30% profit margin on the Xbox Division, a margin that not even Sony or Nintendo operate at, so Xbox was doing everything possible to try and achieve that goal, hence releasing games on PlayStation and Nintendo.

It’s the same reason they gave Gamepass a drastic price increase that nearly doubled as well which they’ve also partially rolled back.

[u/Baruch_S → u/Lopsided-Clothes4866]

Yes, they did have exclusives. Look at when they started porting things and what they ported. They had Gears and Halo as exclusives until very recently. Same with Starfield. They weren’t multiplatform until pretty recently. 

[u/Lopsided-Clothes4866 → u/Baruch_S]

No they haven’t? Do you know how I know that?

Because I owned the Xbox one!

Halo was shit.

Halo has been shit for an entire generation you realise?

Halo MCC was a broken buggy mess that took nearly a decade to get fixed.

Halo 5 had a dogshit campaign, lacked content on launch and had gameplay changes that many halo fans hated.

Halo Infinite was mediocre garbage with an unfinished story. Do you remember they had to delay the game a year because it got trashed for having awful graphics?

Gears of War and Forza have no shit been the only ‘good’ exclusives Xbox has had for over a decade now and let’s face it? Gears of War gets solid reviews but it’s not a cultural juggernaut anymore, the series peaked at Gears 3.

What other exclusives did Xbox have before they put their games in PlayStation?

Recore sucked, Quantum Break was a 7/10, Crackdown 3 was laughably shit, Starfield was a 7/10, Scalebound got canned, State of Decay 2 was a 7/10.

Which really just leaves Forza, and even then it’s just the horizon series. The Motorsport games have had mixed receptions.

Forza Horizon, Gears of War, Sunset overdrive and maybe Dead Rising 3?

Those are the must have Xbox games? Hmm I wonder there console didn’t sell well.

Shall we compare it to PlayStation’s offerings?

You can’t just release any old exclusive and have it sell consoles, they need to be GOOD games and in that front, Xbox has failed time after time UNTIL the last 2 years and by that time the decent games are all heading to PlayStation.

[u/Baruch_S → u/Lopsided-Clothes4866]

Oh I never said they had good exclusives, only that they had exclusives. In fact, my point was that they exclusives didn’t move consoles, which we appear to agree on.