Microsoft, according to a report by Bloomberg, may seriously rethink its approach to Xbox exclusives and move closer to Sony’s strategy. The new course under Xbox chief Asha Sharma reportedly means that major single-player projects, especially expensive AAA games from internal studios, would remain exclusives within the Xbox ecosystem. That ecosystem appears to include Xbox Series, PC and a future device codenamed Project Helix, described as a hybrid of a console and a computer.
Multiplayer games, meanwhile, are expected to stay multiplatform. For Xbox, this is already familiar territory: wider releases help keep a large audience, in-game sales and online services running across different devices. In simple terms, Microsoft may split the strategy: use story-driven blockbusters to strengthen its own platform, while releasing online games more broadly.
The main goal is said to be boosting sales of Xbox platforms after the bet on Game Pass failed to deliver the expected effect. According to the report, the service had around 30 million subscribers by the end of fiscal 2026, while the original target set back in 2017 was 77 million. That gap likely became one of the reasons for rethinking the strategy.
The shift comes amid a major restructuring of Microsoft’s gaming division. Earlier reports mentioned mass layoffs, the sale or spin-off of some studios, and the cancellation of several unannounced games. There were also reports that Game Pass talks and contracts with external developers had been paused, although it is unclear whether they later resumed.
If the rumor is confirmed, Xbox would effectively try to use single-player exclusives as a growth tool for its own platform — much like PlayStation does. Sony’s example shows, however, that even big exclusives do not always directly lift hardware sales, especially when timed exclusivity is involved.