There’s obviously been a whole lot of discussion surrounding Phil Spencer’s comments about Xbox exclusives this week, and how essentially there’s no red line anymore about which games could appear on other platforms as well.
We’ve seen mixed opinions on this, but someone who is definitely in favour of it is the Moon Studios CEO Thomas Mahler, who previously worked on the Ori series of games alongside Microsoft and then turned down an exclusive deal for the company’s most recent title, No Rest for the Wicked.
In a post on social media, Mahler went into detail about why he thinks the strategy makes sense both from a business perspective as well as a fan perspective, even suggesting that PlayStation will follow suit at some point in the future.
Here are some excerpts from his social media post:
“XSX and PS5 basically contain the same hardware nowadays, so porting from one platform to another isn’t that big of a deal anymore. Their controllers are mostly the same. The Steam boxes will also be the same. Not supporting all these devices makes no sense since you just cut out a huge chunk of your potential audience.”
“Consoles have been stuck attracting the same 100-150m players for over two decades now. If we want to see the industry grow, it needs to be easier for everyone to access the content.”
“I’d be surprised if Sony won’t end up with the same strategy. People should buy the device they like the most, but they should then have access to all the content. And yes, Nintendo will keep doing their own thing because Nintendo is Nintendo and that’s okay.”
“Rooting for one huge corporation to sell more boxes over another strikes me as fantastically senseless – we should all just share in the love for games!”
He’s also been very active in responding to people over the past few days, highlighting that he’s not actually a massive fan of the Xbox Series S, and that it’s essential for Xbox players to be able to access their games on PC as well.
In terms of the PlayStation thing, he advised that Sony can probably avoid putting first-party games on the Xbox Series X and Series S due to having an advantage in hardware sales, but that’s not guaranteed to last in the future, and if the company starts slipping for whatever reason, the exclusive strategy will go out the window.
“Simply put, the economics have changed. Making exclusives for one platform that sells 50-70m units or so made sense when games cost 5, 10, 50m to make. Nowadays games cost 100-150m and up to produce, so unless you’re lucky to be the ring leader, you’ll not be able to afford to limit your potential audience.”
“Given how much it costs to make the AAA games Sony and Microsoft have been known to make, you’re not doing yourself or your audience any favors by locking players down to a specific box. Especially if you can’t guarantee that your box will be THE box, which nobody can anymore.”
When challenged about the fact that exclusives have historically sold consoles on their own, the Moon Studios CEO admitted that “software sells hardware” and that will always be true, but questioned if that has to mean exclusives.
For example, he suggested that both Xbox and PlayStation have stagnated in various areas when it comes to user experience on their consoles, claiming that less of a reliance on exclusives would force them to innovate in these areas:
“If hardware would have to sell hardware, you’d suddenly see a lot of innovation happening. The OSs we have on consoles still suck, there are very few convenience / QoL features built in, Sony and MS are behind on stuff like DLSS, FrameGen, etc. Recently we haven’t even seen any new features being introduced or risks being taken.”
“I’d love to see hardware being innovative again, really changing the way developers make games, allowing for new genres to appear, etc. – and we might even be better off if nobody can rest on their laurels anymore.”
There are plenty more responses than just the ones highlighted above, but you get the picture. Mahler clearly believes in the strategy that Phil Spencer and his team are going for, which bodes well for an Ori 3 from Xbox Game Studios!
In fact, he suggested this week that’s been “talking” to Xbox about such a project… make it happen, Phil!
Do you agree with what Mahler is saying here? Let us know down in the comments below.
[source x.com]
