The most upsetting thing about Xbox’s SGF showcase was Marcus Fenix’ jacket

Get ready to rattle your war sabres – or, more likely, rev up your chainguns – and launch into another skirmish in the renewed console wars. Just when you thought they were done and dusted, here comes Xbox with a cover-hopping, gun-butt socking blow of game exclusivity, and this time, Marcus Fenix wears a jacket!

For those who haven’t been following along, Xbox used to be a single console platform until they got confused about how to lend your friends a game disc. Then, it became a dual threat PC and console hybrid platform, before eventually announcing that pretty much everything was to be considered an Xbox, from your phone to your laptop, and they’d probably have argued that even that PS5 of yours counts if you play their games on it. And a lot of people were, with the bulk of the top-selling games on the PlayStation Store coming out of Microsoft-owned companies. The only problem with all of this? Well, it meant that the only thing that didn’t feel much like an Xbox anymore was Xbox itself.

The last few years have been a major case of identity crisis for Xbox. On the one hand, they were tapping into a new revenue stream  on a new platform, but they were also selling fewer and fewer consoles, the tangible excitement of new game announcements making way for muddled questions over when it would be coming to PS5. Some of that couldn’t be helped – those pesky Activision agreements to keep Call of Duty multiplatform – but, PlayStation owners took a great deal of joy from playing Forza Horizon 5, Sea of Thieves and Indiana Jones and The Great Circle, when nothing was being sent back in return, and the push to make everything be an Xbox was stalling when subscriber counts for Xbox Game Pass weren’t climbing fast enough.

Change, in retrospect, was needed quite desperately, and Asha Sharma has spent her first half year in the job plucking low hanging, fan-pleasing fruits. Xbox is now XBOX in all-caps, all of the time (except where people don’t want to write it like that), and the renewed logo now has a translucent green look to it. She then found a number of things to do that actually matter to the majority of gamers.

First up, she reduced the cost of Game Pass Ultimate, the monthly fees having ballooned to compensate for the addition of Call of Duty, and a lot of people (myself including) having let long-standing subscriptions lapse. Anything that makes gaming a bit more affordable in the midst of our inflation and cost of living-riddled lives. Behind the scenes, though, Xbox could probably see that COD hadn’t meaningfully moved the needle for subscriber counts in a way that would make up for the lost full sales and the increased subscriber churn. In fact, they lost “millions” after the 50% price hike from last year.

Secondly, and taking us back to this weekend’s Summer Games Fest Xbox showcase, she’s decided, right at the last minute, that exclusive games are a good thing. That means that this year’s Gears of War E-Day and next year’s Clockwork Revolution are console exclusive to Xbox – not timed exclusive, just exclusive – and PS5 owners won’t get a sniff of either of them.

It might be a stretch to say that PS5 owners at large are especially angry about this, but it’s certainly a shift away from their chosen platform being the one console to rule them all. Xbox are leaving money on the table, but you have to imagine that Asha Sharma has wondered just how much of the business will be left if it doesn’t make a serious claim as a console platform of its own.

It was all starting to look and feel a bit Sega, who bowed out of the console race with the Dreamcast to turn to third-party publishing, and with no console exclusives and Project Helix mooted to be closer to a PC than a pure console, the pivot back is a major signal. To be clear, there are still Xbox Game Studios games in the pipeline that are coming to PS5, and quite a lot of them – Halo, Fable, Forza Horizon 6, Senua, State of Decay 3 – but keeping something behind is significant, and the decision will be back to being on a game-by-game basis going forward.

Is this better? For Xbox gamers, it surely has to be, as exclusives are really the only reason to draw players to their platform over Sony’s. For PS5, it’s a blow to lose access to some potentially great games, but then there’s exclusives of their own to enjoy. And if Sony has a slower year? Well maybe a few more eyes will look at greener looking grass over the fence.

For Microsoft and its gaming division, there’s a huge question mark over the entire enterprise. They’ve surely invested well over $100 billion by now between all their acquisitions and ongoing development costs, but there’s been further costs of cancelled games, closed studios and mass layoffs. Whatever upside Game Pass had through the past decade, you have to wonder how financially viable the subscription model truly is.

Clawing back some exclusives seems sensible, but in Gears of War E-Day and Clockwork Revolution they seem to have chosen a franchise that remains indelibly linked to Xbox and one of their more niche titles (as fantastic as it does look). Fable and Forza Horizon 6 definitely have a wider appeal, and while making money is still part of Sharma’s remit, it’s going to take some real console-selling exclusives to get people to choose an Xbox over a PS5, or, indeed a PC. These two don’t feel like the games that will make that happen.

Which takes us back to Marcus Fenix’s jacket. I don’t think any character in the history of gaming has ever looked quite so silly in their civvies, and after shrugging off a few rounds from one of the Locust guns, it seems that his smart casual attire has the same properties as his full suit of COG armour. Gears of War E-Day could be the best Gears game yet, but that jacket had better receive a swift chainsaw to the seams. Console exclusives are a necessary part of the industry, but if you want something to be angry about, join me in rallying against this poor fashion choice. Who’s with me?

Tags: Gear of War E-Day, Xbox, Xbox Game Pass, Xbox Series X