Asha Sharma has been very busy since she replaced Phil Spencer as the head of Microsoft's gaming division earlier this year. She kept saying all the right things, but has also started taking action by making Game Pass cheaper. Then it's quite understandable that there have also been rumours about Xbox making exclusive games again, as many have been begging for it. Now it sounds like it'll actually happen.
Matt Booty and Asha Sharma has shared a long message they sent to every Xbox employee today, and it's filled with all kinds of details about how things will change and become better under their leadership. They admit that "new feature drops on console have been less frequent. Our presence on PC isn't strong enough. Pricing is getting harder for people to keep up with. And core experiences like search, discovery, social, and personalization still feel too fragmented. Developers and publishers are asking for more, too: better tools, better insights," and that all of these things will be improved in the future.
It's after all of these more concrete examples we get the following tease:
"Along the way, we will reevaluate our approach to exclusivity, windowing, and AI, and share more as we learn and decide."
Not exactly something someone writes without reason when you know your most...eager fans really want exclusive Xbox games again, so it'll be interesting to see when this happens and which game that will mark the official return to exclusives.
Do you think Xbox will return to exclusives before or after Project Helix, their next-gen machine, launches?