Xbox must choose a path, and soon.

in Latest NewsletterJason Schreier of Bloomberg points out that Microsoft’s release strategy is so disjointed that even within Bethesda there are three different types of releases at once. Starfield is Xbox-only and so far, it has remained Xbox-only. Indiana Jones will launch first on Xbox and months later on PS5. DOOM: The Dark Ages will also launch on PS5 at the same time.

It’s chaos, for lack of a better term.

At this point, Microsoft simply has to choose one path and one release strategy, even if it’s not the one fans want to hear.

There is no going back on this now. Pandora’s box has been opened and Microsoft has shown that it is willing to share any game that would have been exclusive previously, even with older competitors like PlayStation. The company will not simply walk away from this decision and in some cases, like Call of Duty, it will. Not possible The same goes for Blizzard’s Overwatch and Diablo games, which of course won’t be taken off PlayStation.

Now, the strategy should be to pull the bandaid. Go to third-party developers. Release everything on Xbox and PS5 at the same time, with one major caveat of course: Xbox players get all these games on day one of Game Pass. PlayStation players have to buy them. I think that’s the best you can get, given the current situation.

There’s no point in trying to get back at Sony in hardware sales. According to analysts, Sony’s previous 2:1 advantage could now be closer to 5:1. Even Phil Spencer admits there’s no competition on that front.

That doesn’t mean Microsoft should stop making hardware. Sure, the PS5 plan will further erode hardware sales, but that’s a moot point right now. If you want the most convenient and likely best place to play Xbox Game Pass games, that’s still going to be Xbox, basically. Sure, a lot of people will buy the PS5 instead, but at this point, Microsoft isn’t investing so much in meaningfully increasing hardware sales that it doesn’t matter.

Choosing a strategy for all games would at least make all of this a little less confusing. Does that mean giving things up to Sony? Yes, but they’re already doing that, and even games you might have imagined would remain exclusives like Fable and Elder Scrolls VI are now uncertain whether or not that will happen. As Spencer recently noted, Microsoft’s Xbox division is still very much a business, which is why these decisions are being made. The unmentioned part is that hardware isn’t a fundamental factor and Game Pass sales are starting to hit a ceiling. So you’re selling physical copies of your games on other platforms as another source of revenue.

This is devaluing the Xbox brand, but what happened? It happened. The Xbox community has barely become a community at all lately in the wake of these confusing PlayStation announcements. What used to be the idea that Xbox would buy developers to revive the console and build a roster to compete with Sony’s long-heralded first-party studios is simply not happening anymore. And again, there’s no going back now.

Xbox is currently stuck between three or four different strategies at the moment. Let’s simplify them:

• Release Xbox studio games on PS5 day one at full price.
• Xbox Studios games released on day one of Game Pass “for free”, without any confusing new tiers.
• It’s based on the idea that the best place to play Game Pass games is on Xbox, even if cloud streaming and (expensive) PCs make Game Pass playable elsewhere.
• Admit to yourself that you sacrificed what was once a loyal community in the name of “we want everyone to play Xbox games in as many places as possible” which finally manifested itself in the PlayStation versions. You can’t get them back, it’s over.

Is this a great path forward? No, but I would argue that it is better than whatever is happening now, which is a confusing mess, damaging to the brand and annoying to players anyway, and a system that tries to do both when it is no longer actually possible.

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