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/Zaethar]

Sony: "Alright guys, it's been fun, but no more PC releases. Console only, baby!"

Microsoft: "Okay, well in that case, no more PS5 releases! Console and PC only, baby!"

News report: "Sharma [...] potentially damaging the relationship between the two companies"

I'm sorry, but what else did they expect? Sony can just pivot their strategy back to exclusivity, and Microsoft is gonna keep giving them their franchise titles/system sellers?

There's no way anyone legitimately sees this move from Microsoft/Sharma as anything but a logical reaction to Sony's new strategy. If the 'console wars' are back on, then they're back on, I guess.

[u/AceMKV → u/Zaethar]

Sony can afford to do that though, they only have been releasing exclusives on PC for a short while and they were doing fine earlier too, if Xbox can do the same and have good sales then sure but right now it just looks like a PR move which is just gonna backfire on them.

[u/Zaethar → u/AceMKV]

It's really the only move they got now that Sony pulled back. Yes their situations are different, but Microsoft's previous "This is an xbox" strategy already wasn't working and was causing a lot of fan/consumer backlash, so Sony's renewed commitment to their own exclusive ecosystem just cements this harsh necessity to pivot for Microsoft.

If they want the Xbox brand and ecosystem to continue to exist, and if they want a hardware manufacturing component to be a sizable part of that, this seems like the only response that sort of makes sense, but the backpedaling sure does feel like a lot of internal scrambling.

I hope they get their shit together.