What does it take to make a great video game console? Well, it has to be well constructed, simple enough for players to use, have certain features to help make it a total experience, and then, most importantly, it has to have games. But what kind of games? Well, any genre is fine, but the real question is, “who’s making the games?” Third-party titles are important because not all developers are publishers. But, 1st party games are vital because these are exclusives from that publisher and the teams under them. And Xbox hasn’t always had the best record in this department.
Now, yes, they have had some great exclusive franchises like Halo, Gears of War, Crackdown, Forza Horizon, and a few others. But it pales in comparison to what Sony and Nintendo have under their belts. Sony is set to release a new masterpiece in the next God Of War title, which has gotten early reviews that confims its greatness.
So this leaves the question, “Where are all the Xbox exclusives?” Well, the head of the division, Phil Spencer, took to Twitter to say that these things take time:
Our hardware took time, our service/platform/BC took time and continuing to grow our 1P will take time. A high quality and diverse 1P (yes, with SP) built the right way is our goal and what our customers deserve. We can have similar results to what we’ve seen in hw and platform.
He’s not wrong that it takes time, however, fans are quick to point out that they’ve had time. This is their third generation of console via the Xbox One, and that console has been alive for some time now. What’s more, when they launched the Xbox One X, it had no exclusives on it, just “enhanced” versions of the games everyone was already playing. And this year isn’t looking any different so far.
So if there’s going to be a change, it does need to be soon.
