Mike Ybarra—who spent almost two decades at Microsoft and two years leading Blizzard—has been very critical of Xbox's recent decisions, including the decision to open the brand's exclusives to hardware competitors, namely PlayStation and Nintendo.
Recently, Xbox president Sarah Bond described exclusives as "antiquated" because "the biggest games in the world are available everywhere." Bond cites Fortnite, Roblox, Call of Duty and Minecraft as examples of multiplatform behemoths.
Xbox, being a console manufacturer, previously pursued a strategy of releasing exclusive games on its consoles. However, over the last year and a half, Xbox has been slowly porting its first-party games to PlayStation 5, while publicly decrying the practice of making games exclusive to one platform.
The reason for this seismic shift in attitude is simple — the PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch have larger user bases than the Xbox Series X/S, and Xbox sought to increase the sales of its first-party games. However, this decision casts doubt on the future of Xbox hardware. Why would consumers purchase an Xbox when they can get both companies' first-party games on PlayStation?
"Someone go tell Nintendo that exclusives are antiquated," writes Ybarra, in response to Bond's comments. Nintendo has been a...
