Under new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, Microsoft’s gaming division has been instituting radical changes and reversals. These include laying off thousands of employees, shuffling around and divesting from some owned studios, and making some games Xbox console exclusives, such as Gears of War: E-Day. According to a new report, Xbox leadership is toying with additional exclusivity, including potentially making franchises like Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, and even Minecraft only available on Microsoft’s platforms.
The proposed changes sound dramatic and may never come to pass, but Xbox is floating the idea with its most dedicated users in a new survey, reports Windows Central.
Xbox is polling its biggest fans about new exclusives
According to Windows Central, Microsoft has distributed a survey to “a subset of Xbox users on the Insider Program” asking those users questions about where they would purchase future games in the Fallout, Elder Scrolls, and Minecraft franchises if they were no longer available on PlayStation or Nintendo platforms.
A screenshot of one of the survey questions reads as follows:
Imagine it was announced that all future title releases in the Fallout franchise will be console-exclusive to Xbox and no longer available on PlayStation or Nintendo. Existing Fallout titles would remain available where they are today. Nothing changes on PC with this announcement.
Under this scenario, which of the following best describes where you are MOST LIKELY to play any of this new exclusive content.
The survey then asks where they would play this exclusive content, with the following responses:
- On an existing Xbox I own
- On a new Xbox Series X|S I would decide to purchase
- On a PC
- I would skip playing because it would now be unavailable on my preferred console
- Something else (please specify)
- Not interested in playing this exclusive content
Another survey question posits a future where all releases “from every Xbox-developed gaming franchise except Call of Duty will be console-exclusive to Xbox,” including Minecraft, with the same responses. Currently, Minecraft is available on a wide range of platforms, including competing consoles such as Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5, as well as non-Microsoft platforms like Android, iOS, Linux, and Mac.
Why is Call of Duty exempt from Xbox exclusivity?
Microsoft would not make Call of Duty exclusive in this scenario, likely as a result of the 10-year agreement it signed with Nintendo, Nvidia, and Sony in 2023 to keep the franchise on a variety of platforms. That concession was made while Microsoft was seeking regulatory approval for its $68 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Under the terms of that agreement, only Call of Duty is guaranteed to remain multiplatform, not every Activision Blizzard-owned franchise.
If Xbox were to move forward with its drastic new exclusivity plans, it would likely have a noticeable impact on the sales of announced games like The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5. Developer Bethesda Softworks has generally been platform-agnostic for its key franchises, bringing games like The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim to a wide variety of platforms — a Switch 2 port of the 15-year-old RPG was released just last year.
Xbox chief content officer Matt Booty and CEO Asha Sharma told employees in April that the gaming division’s new leadership would reevaluate Xbox’s “approach to exclusivity, windowing, and AI.” Hot on the heels of news that Xbox timed-exclusive Forza Horizon 6 won’t come to PlayStation 5 until 2027 and a special projects group called Xbox Labs that sounds very AI-focused, Booty and Sharma are making good on their new approach.