The CEO of Microsoft Gives His Thoughts On Console Exclusivity

The topic of console exclusives and ports is a hot topic in the gaming community and the current CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadell has decided to weigh in on the discussion and share some of his thoughts on the topic. According to the CEO, he would "love to get rid of console exclusives entirely…" including console exclusivity on the company's own Xbox Platform.

As mentioned earlier, the topic of console exclusives has been an incredibly heated subject, especially in regards to the number of highly anticipated titles that will be released on the Xbox platform, such as Bethesda's upcoming space-faring RPG, Starfield. While both Xbox and its long-time rival, PlayStation, have an impressive catalog of console exclusives, and have reaped plenty of benefits from having these titles released only on their respective platforms, it would seem that due to recent acquisitions that the company may be considering a different approach.

 

These changes are most likely due to the $69 billion acquisition of and the situation surrounding it. Very recently, multiple executives from the company have appeared in front of the United States Federal Trade Commission in order to seal the deal of the acquisition. If you haven't been keeping up with the whole situation, it certainly has been eventful, many of Xbox's secrets have been exposed during Microsoft's attempts to convince the United States Federal Trade Commission to allow the acquisition of Activision Blizzard to go ahead.

Everything that took place during the United States Federal Trade Commission hearing was luckily reported by Video Games Chronicle. This is also where we first hear from current Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadell, that he personally has “no love" for console exclusives. He also then says that if things were up to him, console exclusivity would be a thing of the past. Nadell is well aware of the fact that the matter is out of his hands and says "that's not for me to define." According to Nadell, he claims that rival Sony was the one who "defined market competition using exclusives," and because of this trend that Sony started, Xbox couldn't afford to do otherwise.

According to the CEO, Xbox has sadly lost the console wars of the mid 2010's, but this does however, explain the company's focus on continued console exclusives. This hearing could also be a tough one for Microsoft, especially due to the comments made by PlayStation boss, Jim Ryan, who shared some of his thoughts on Starfield being an Xbox exclusive, describing the whole ordeal as "anti-competive".

Daman Shelley (@UndeadandTired)
Editor, NoobFeed