New Xbox CEO Asha Sharma said the thing console loyalists have been begging for: Gears of War: E-Day will remain an exclusive. Despite reported plans to previously bring the upcoming shooter to PlayStation 5, Microsoft has seemingly reversed course in an attempt to win back hardcore fans.
The surprise exclusivity was Sharma’s first announcement of the Xbox summer showcase, arriving after several minutes of gameplay for the upcoming Gears prequel was revealed in an extended trailer. The change-up comes after a Gears of War: E-Day placeholder page on Walmart for a PS5 version appeared online last night before later being deleted.
Xbox CEO Asha Sharma announces Gears E-Day will go back to being an Xbox Series X/S console exclusive pic.twitter.com/Hlji1fZUlW
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The question of exclusivity has been the biggest one facing Sharma since she took over the top job from Phil Spencer earlier this year. While Microsoft appeared to be shifting to being primarily a third-party publisher and bringing all of its major games to other platforms, Sharma’s first 100 days have been marked by the drum beat of “returning to Xbox.” Part of that reset now appears to be taking a retreat from putting everything on PS5.
“I think it’s a tough topic,” Sharma said in an interview last week. “Look, we’re the number-two publisher in the world. And in order to be a great publisher, you must have your games reach large audiences to play.”
But she continued, “At the same time, we’re increasingly becoming a platform. In order to be a platform, you must have exclusive content and services. And so we’re looking at that very closely. I think that we have to be very thoughtful about each title and how we want to think about it and learn from similar cases in the industry.”
That doesn’t mean everything at Xbox will now be exclusive. Forza Horizon 6 is still seemingly coming to PS5 later this year, and Fable has already been announced as a multiplatform release as well. But this latest move does signal that other first-party games can no longer be assumed to be coming to anything beyond Xbox and PC at launch.