Xbox Showcase
Are Exclusives Back?
It seems the season for videogame shows. State of plays, summer fests and showcases are showing us with video trailers for videogames every which way you look. The most recent has been Xbox’s showcase event, and it was alright.
The show had a fair few titles in it, and there were a few particularly interesting games on show, both first and third-party. Sega had a strong showing with the return of Crazy Taxi and a very short, very scant Persona 6 reveal. And for Xbox owned studios themselves, all the big names were there: Gears of War, Halo, Fable and Call of Duty were all present; we even got another look at the new game Clockwork Revolution. Two of those games deserve a particular look: Gears of War: E-Day and Clockwork Revolution. Both those games were revealed to be ‘console exclusives’. That looks to mean that these two games will only appear on Xbox consoles and PC—not the traditional definition of exclusive, but a step in the right direction for some fans. This news is in line with what Xbox boss Asha Sharma has been saying about trying to return Xbox it’s identity; and I must admit, I had my suspicions that we would see exclusives return to the console platform especially so quickly. That isn’t the whole story though, with Fable being a first-party game that is coming to PS5. That sort of mixed messaging is probably a product of the long development time for such games. Plans would have been made and costs and profits would haver been considered, such that Microsoft cannot simply scrap all plans for multiplatform releases.
What I think will probably be the case is that these ‘exclusives’ are something of an experiment. The truth is that transforming Xbox to a service with Game Pass hasn’t made Microsoft as much money they would like and, in the process, they’ve alienated a lot of Xbox fans. Because of this, the return of some semi-exclusive games can act as both a shield against accusations that Microsoft are ignoring fans and as an experiment to see if it does anything to improve Xbox hardware sales. Whether it will or not I’m not sure, but time will tell.
Playing videogames, writing about videogames, considering videogames—that about sums it up. Videogames are the one hobby that I’ve kept since I was only little, zapping ducks on the NES or knocking out MR. X. And when I’m not enjoying classics from the bit generation of games or checking out those earliest of polygons, I’m probably playing something from today’s age of modern gaming: if I’m not complaining about it. Something I’m doing at the moment? Taking the Multisystem 2 for a spin.
