Xbox’s Strategy Makes Sense Now — If You Squint at It Right

Microsoft has made approximately four strategic pivots in gaming in the past six years: hardware-first, then subscription-first, then acquisition-first, then — after the FTC challenge to the Activision deal — multiplatform-first. Each pivot was announced as a coherent strategy. None of them looked coherent until the next one replaced it.

The current strategy — releasing first-party titles on PlayStation and, in some cases, Nintendo platforms in addition to Xbox and PC — is the one that actually makes sense, and it has taken the longest to accept because it implicitly admits that the console war, from Microsoft’s perspective, is over.

Xbox is not trying to beat PlayStation in hardware sales. It hasn’t been trying for several years, despite what the press releases implied. It is trying to establish Game Pass as a platform-agnostic subscription that follows players across whatever hardware they own, in the same way that Netflix follows users across devices.

The multiplatform release of titles like Halo and Gears — previously unthinkable as PlayStation exclusives — is the logical endpoint of this strategy. If the subscription is the product, the console is merely a delivery mechanism. There is no strategic reason to restrict delivery.

Whether Game Pass can achieve Netflix-level ubiquity is a different question, and one the numbers haven’t yet answered.