The exclusives discussion seems to have discussion seems to have kickstarted again after the quarterly report. There seems to be a lot of opinions in the line of "now that they've had a taste of that PS5/Switch user revenue, there's no other paths besides going all the way". This comes from a largely misguided perspective of their current situation. The fact is, the vast majority of their revenue is already coming from multiplatform sources, including CoD, Minecraft, King and all the Blizzard franchises, plus all the live service stuff they intended to make multiplatform anyway. Then you have Game Pass revenue and Xbox store cut on third party games. The fact is, the potential PS5/Switch revenue from games like HB2, Indy even Halo and Gears is a sliver compared to what they are already making from games like CoD. I think only multiplatform FH would really make an impact in their software revenues.
If you look at it this way, the question becomes, will they forgo part of that market potential on PS5/Switch, which is tiny in the grand scheme of things, in order to maintain the viability of Xbox hardware and ensure future revenue of Game Pass and Xbox store cut. And to me that seems a pretty clear business case. But as others have said, they are clearly experimenting on the degree of exclusivity they want to keep.
If you look at it this way, the question becomes, will they forgo part of that market potential on PS5/Switch, which is tiny in the grand scheme of things, in order to maintain the viability of Xbox hardware and ensure future revenue of Game Pass and Xbox store cut. And to me that seems a pretty clear business case. But as others have said, they are clearly experimenting on the degree of exclusivity they want to keep.