Microsoft Defends Xbox Series X's Lack of Exclusives at Launch

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Boss of Xbox Phil Spencer has defended the lack of Xbox Series X exclusives at launch, as it has been revealed that all of the games for the system will be cross-gen with the Xbox One for at least a year. The 2020 holiday season will see the launch of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox One, yet there is still a lot we don't know about both systems, including exact hardware specifications and how much they will cost.

There haven't been many games confirmed for either system, but the Xbox Series X launch games will be cross-gen with Xbox One. There won't be any true Xbox Series X exclusives within the first year of the launch of the system, and there might not be any during the second year either. This means that games like Halo: Infinite will be available on multiple systems at launch, which seems like an unwise move on Microsoft's part. Halo: Infinite will be released alongside the new Xbox, so it would have made sense for Microsoft to give fans a huge reason to shell out cash for its new system with a brand new Halo game.

The decision to release games on both the Xbox One and Xbox Series X has been defended by Phil Spencer, who is the executive vice-president of Gaming at Microsoft and the head of the Xbox brand. Spencer defended this decision on Gamertag Radio (via VG247), saying that the company wants to focus on the player and not the device. The Xbox Series X will be the best way to play these games, but Microsoft doesn't want to exclude other players in the process. Spencer said:
 

 

Obviously we built our strategy with Series X, we started with that in mind – we wanted to go build a gaming console that was going to be the absolute best that we could deliver on a television, and deliver unique capability to creators that they could use to go create the best games. But you don’t want to do that to the exclusion of everybody else and you also want to do that hand-in-hand with developers because developers want to find the widest audience possible. And yes, there are always trade-offs. I’m not gonna dictate to every third-party studio what they have to support, but what we see in today’s world is that gamers want to go and play games with their friends regardless of what device those friends are on, people want to have the largest selection of games open to them, and developers want to make use of the best technology that’s available. We built this plan with all three of those as inputs and we feel really good about where we are.

It's a dangerous tactic for Microsoft to not have exclusives ready for the Xbox Series X at launch. A lot of people have predicted the price for the next generation of systems and they likely won't be cheap. There are also a lot of gamers who have wised up over the course of several console generations and know there is little reason to buy a new system at launch. It makes a lot more sense to wait a year or two for more games to be available, for missing features to be added in, and for the first price cut/bundle deal to happen. If all of the incredible games that Microsoft is promising are also available on Xbox One, then why buy an Xbox Series X at launch?

The intention for the Xbox Series X is that it represents every generation of Xbox system. It's clear that Microsoft has big plans for the Xbox Series X and that it has no intention of losing any more ground to Sony. The decision to make the Xbox Series X launch games cross-gen is a puzzling one, but at least the people who aren't ready to make the jump in 2020 won't be left behind.