It took just a day for some clear patterns to emerge in the Xbox Player Voice feedback forum, with the clear-cut leading request being bringing back Xbox console exclusives. A player named Carlos Hernandez shared a request to bring them back, claiming that Xbox isn’t selling enough consoles because there’s no reason to buy them when the games can be bought and played on competing systems. Within a day, that request has received nearly 10,000 upvotes, and over a thousand comments.
This reeks of manipulation. Console makers have an interest in making exclusives look attractive to studios. Players are interested in exclusives because… why? If you already have an Xbox why do you care if a title is exclusive or not?
I don’t trust it.
No exclusives is great for everyone, but everyone has to do it or the one platform without exclusives is pointless.
Consumers are unfortunately, just that fucking stupid.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Yeah I absolutely believe Xbox fanboys would be in favor of anti-consumerist practices. Not because I think they’re stupid but because one of the main points of contention of the “console wars” were exclusives. Nintendo has exclusives, Sony goes back to exclusivity so obviously monke brain goes “we need exclusivity”. Console gamers want to go back to petty tribalism so their suggestions are going to be reflections of the same tribalism they want to return to.
Have you looked at the page? It would be a BIG effort to fake it, and the suggestions read like the kind of stupid shit only real players come up with. “Make Xbox Love free” was one of the top suggestions… why would Xbox even put that on there, much less fake it to the top?
Because console makers make money by selling consoles, and exclusive titles are bait meant to entice players to buy into the platform? It seems like it lines up really well with how Xbox makes its money, but I don’t see how players benefit at all.
I’m not saying every comment is fake; I’m sure some people on that forum genuinely feel strongly about Halo or whatever remaining an Xbox exclusive, but that can’t possibly be their number one most important thing they want Xbox to do. I don’t have any evidence but my gut says there’s some skullduggery going on. I don’t think it would be too hard for Microsoft to manipulate a forum they control either, and the incentives seem pretty clearly aligned with Microsoft. It’s just very convenient for them that this article exists.
Consoles are typically loss leaders. They make money on the games, accessories, etc. If Microsoft dropped exclusives, it means more money making games with less money losing consoles… It’s purely a business profitability move, not a gamer move.
Sony probably realized people would much prefer Steam and PC overPS and saw a drop in console sales which hurt game sales. So they’re back tracking to exclusives to being back money.
See Microsoft is software where Sony is hardware. That’s why Xbox is dying. Like Sega. Just focused on software and IPs…
I personally do not believe Microsoft would control this in some way, or try to manipulate the public view with fake posts or replies. It is possible, and it would be characteristic of Microsoft. And there is even a motive to do so, in order to get back to exclusives and say “look we listen to the community”.
But to me, having a motive isn’t enough to make me believe. So without strong evidence that Microsoft is pushing this and manipulating the forum of user voice, I will not believe that… for now. And trust me, I’m not much of a Microsoft fan at all. Don’t take this as a defense of corporation. I just can’t believe everything by just having a motive.
I work for Microsoft, and a lot of my former co-workers are still in the Xbox org. And can assure you they absolutely don’t have the ability to fake any of that.