Major console manufacturers Sony and Microsoft appear to be reversing their recent multiplatform release strategies, signaling a potential return to console-exclusive games. Sony is reportedly pulling back from releasing its major PS5 titles on PC, as the ports did not meet sales expectations or drive significant console adoption, and were seen as diluting the PlayStation brand.
While Microsoft has pushed multiplatform releases more aggressively, new leadership hints at a renewed focus on core Xbox fans and the console, suggesting a possible strategic pivot. This shift indicates that the strategy of using multiplatform games to lure new players into a specific console ecosystem has largely failed to meet expectations.
Main topics: Console exclusives, multiplatform game strategy, Sony's PlayStation, Microsoft's Xbox, market trends.
The near future of game consoles could look a lot like the past. Once a hallmark of the industry, over the last few years console-exclusive games have steadily become rare, as the likes of Sony and Microsoft experimented with offering titles on multiple platforms. Heck, who knows what an Xbox even is anymore? But it seems that the experiments haven’t paid off. Signs are pointing to the return of exclusives, as companies lean on other ways to entice new audiences.
Console exclusives might be making a comeback
Sony and Microsoft have spent years luring new audiences with multiplatform games, but the tide appears to be turning.
Sony and Microsoft have spent years luring new audiences with multiplatform games, but the tide appears to be turning.
The most obvious indication of this shift comes from a Bloomberg report that Sony is pulling back from releasing its big PS5 games on PC, much in the way that it scaled back its live-service ambitions after some high-profile failures. It’s a notable change from previous plans. In 2022, two years after the launch of the PS5, Sony made it clear that platforms like PC and mobile were a key part of its strategy. “By expanding to PC and mobile, and it must be said… also to live services, we have the opportunity to move from a situation of being present in a very narrow segment of the overall gaming software market, to being present pretty much everywhere,” former Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan said at the time.
The idea was that by offering games like God of War and The Last of Us in other places, particularly ubiquitous ones like PC and mobile, it would attract new players who would — ideally — go on to buy a PS5. But that never really happened, and Bloomberg notes that the PC ports didn’t sell especially well, and that some inside Sony worried that the strategy was diluting the PlayStation brand. With that in mind, moving on from the multiplatform strategy makes sense.
Things are less clear at Xbox, which has pushed much harder on the multiplatform concept. It started with a handful of games in 2024, and has since expanded with multiple high-profile releases across both PlayStation and the Nintendo Switch. Now it’s not unheard of to see formerly Xbox-exclusive names like Forza topping PlayStation sales charts. The highlight of a recent Nintendo Direct was a bunch of titles from Microsoft-owned Bethesda. In 2023 Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella even said that “If it was up to me I would love to get rid of the entire exclusives on consoles,” blaming Sony for perpetuating the practice.
But there are hints that Microsoft too could be scaling back here as well, though it’s much less clear than with Sony. As part of a big leadership shakeup, new Microsoft Gaming CEO Asha Sharma said that one of her goals was to focus on “our core Xbox fans and players.” And while she noted that “gaming now lives across devices, not within the limits of any single piece of hardware,” she still emphasized “a renewed commitment to Xbox starting with console which has shaped who we are.” Perhaps more tellingly, in response to a fan on X about the importance of exclusive games, Sharma replied simply “Hear you.”
What both of these shifts signify is that multiplatform releases haven’t done the job of driving players to buy consoles like these companies expected. You only need to look at Nintendo to see a more clear-cut example of this at play. The company never released games on rival consoles, but it made a big splash in the world of mobile with Super Mario Run, with the explicit intention of introducing its games to new audiences. “I feel like Mario was what introduced millions of people to video games and interactive entertainment, and I think that Mario will continue to serve that role,” Super Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto told me in 2016. “And I think with Super Mario Run that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”
Even with Miyamoto involved, Mario Run didn’t perform as expected, and Nintendo has steadily retreated from mobile to focus on exclusive games for its own platforms. But the dream of luring in new audiences never went away; it simply took on a different form. Instead of putting Mario games on non-Nintendo devices, the company has brought its mascot and other characters to different mediums, like film and theme parks. It built an entertainment empire with a video game console at its center.
It’s a strategy that both Sony and Microsoft appear to be following as well. Both have seen success through the likes of HBO’s adaptation of The Last of Us and a Fallout show on Prime Video, and there are plenty of more projects on the way. When they work, these shows do the job intended by multiplatform games — introducing these franchises to new audiences — without cannibalizing sales or diluting a console’s image. And coupled with major exclusives, the strategy gives that new audience a reason to invest in a console. That’s especially important now, when dedicated consoles have become a tougher sell with more competition and steadily rising prices.
For a while it looked like the future of gaming was multiplatform. But as the biggest console makers refocus on exclusives, part of that future might actually be found outside of games.
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