Microsoft plans more Xbox exclusives — here's what could skip PS5

Microsoft is shifting strategy and plans to make more of its best games Xbox and PC exclusives, skipping PlayStation 5. New Xbox boss Asha Sharma has already kicked this off, with Gears of War: E-Day and Clockwork Revolution confirmed as Xbox console exclusives. Bloomberg reports the broader push is coming — big multiplayer games will still go multiplatform, but Microsoft's top single-player and prestige titles may not.

Several games are already confirmed for PS5 and presumably stay that way: Fable launches February 23, 2027 across PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC; Forza Horizon 6 is still listed for PlayStation without a firm date; Minecraft Dungeons 2 hits everything including Nintendo Switch 2 on September 29, 2026. The harder questions surround unannounced or distant titles. The Elder Scrolls 6 is a strictly single-player game — exactly the kind of title that could go exclusive. Rumored remasters of Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas are also in the mix, following the successful Oblivion Remastered release. And then there's Halo: a new mainline entry could return to its exclusive roots, though this summer's Halo: Campaign Evolved was confirmed multiplatform before Sharma took over.

This pivot comes as Xbox is in serious trouble. Sharma herself described the situation as "the most severe hardware crisis in its history," with Xbox sitting in third place behind PlayStation and Nintendo Switch. Microsoft's previous strategy — Game Pass growth, studio acquisitions, multiplatform releases — failed to deliver the expected returns. "While those businesses have created meaningful value, they did not grow at the pace we expected," Sharma said when announcing the layoffs. Those cuts are brutal: 1,600 jobs gone this week, another 1,600 over the next year, and five studios exiting the Xbox business entirely. id Software was gutted, ZeniMax Online Studios — developer of The Elder Scrolls Online — was hit hard, and Obsidian suffered significant losses too.

The exclusivity gamble is a high-stakes one. Keeping a game like The Elder Scrolls 6 off PlayStation means walking away from hundreds of millions in potential revenue, betting that the draw of exclusive content will push hardware sales instead. Whether that trade-off makes sense for a platform in financial crisis is the central question Xbox now has to answer.