To say that Asha Sharma and the team have been pulling out all the stops to get the Xbox brand back to the forefront would be an understatement. They’ve spent the better part of 2 months reversing a lot of the previous regime’s decisions, including lowering the price of Game Pass while removing Call of Duty as a day 1 title. Today however they may have made their boldest statement yet, suggesting that exclusives may be coming back.

In a message that was sent to all Xbox employees and then sent out to the public through the Xbox Wire the message comes from Asha Sharma and Matt Booty and is all about “We Are Xbox”. One of the many complaints fans had about the end of the Phil Spencer era was that the focus was less and less about Xbox. It appears Sharma thinks that was a big mistake and wants to rectify that.

The email makes mention of Xbox more times than I could count. Lets just say SEO would consider it keyphrase stuffing if that was the sort of thing they cared about. But the message is clear. We are Xbox and our brand will be that of a strong console and great content.

They acknowledge that they have a lot of work to do. Xbox has next to no imprint on many global markets, and even the ones they do they are falling behind. They want to fix that starting with Project Helix. The way things are going makes me think they want to get the next generation underway as soon as they can with an affordable, yet powerful console.

And that is something they are really going to have to do to have any chance. Microsoft may not like it, but to get any traction they will likely have to take a hit on hardware. Will anyone outside the hardcore buy a $1000 Xbox? My gut would tell me no. But a powerful say $600 machine? They’ve at least got a better chance.

Return Of Exclusives?

Perhaps the most interesting part of this entire email that was sent out was in regards to exclusivity. Xbox had gone further and further away from exclusivity in the past couple of years. Flagship titles like Forza Horizon 5 went to PlayStation. Halo: Campaign Evolved is scheduled for release on PlayStation. The list goes on. Many assumed once they did that they could never put the genie back into the bottle so to speak, but perhaps they can?

“Along the way, we will reevaluate our approach to exclusivity, windowing, and AI, and share more as we learn and decide.” That isn’t a definitive yes that they will return to exclusives, but it sure makes you think they might be. I used to say it might be smart for them to put games like Sea of Thieves, Forza Horizon 5 and Halo on PlayStation, get those players interested in those titles and then make the next games exclusive to see if they’d come to the system once they got a taste of how good those games are. While I don’t think that was actually the plan, it might end up happening anyways.

Considering the sheer size of Xbox Gaming now with how many studios they do have, if they decided to go the full exclusive route they would at the very least have a lineup that would be intriguing. I’ve often said they should have given their studios a chance as exclusives to see if they could move the needle or not, but yet they never really got the chance. Perhaps now they will.

We will have to see how this plays out. The Xbox Showcase in June could tell us a lot about what they are thinking when it comes to exclusivity. But it is at the very least an exciting time to be an Xbox fan, and it’s been awhile since we’ve truly been able to say that.