Should Xbox players be upset that their exclusives might be heading to PlayStation?

Throughout the start of 2024, reports have surfaced that Xbox is heavily considering going cross-platform with several of its major exclusive titles, including Starfield, Sea of Thieves, Gears of War, Hi-Fi Rush, and the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

For several groups of people, this can be considered good news. Xbox wants to further its goal of putting first-party titles on as many screens as possible (while boosting its revenue in the process), and PlayStation (and Switch) users can eventually play titles they otherwise would never have been able to play. But there’s a section of Xbox players who aren’t thrilled about the news.

Why are Xbox players upset about exclusives coming to PlayStation?

Not every gamer has the income to afford a gaming PC and multiple consoles, so many have had to choose one. And those who went with Xbox might be feeling a bit cheated by this development. Everyone has their own reasons for choosing a console, and two major factors considered by most consumers are cost and exclusives.

Buying an Xbox has been a go-to option for players who want to play the exclusives listed above but don’t want to spend more than twice what an Xbox costs on a PC instead. But by doing so, single-console gamers have effectively had to surrender the ability to play PlayStation exclusives.

With several of these Xbox exclusives being considered for cross-platform inclusivity, Xbox players are now wondering why they didn’t just wait and get a PS5 instead if they wanted to specifically play games like Starfield, Sea of Thieves, or Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Yes, they would have to wait longer to play those games, but they could fill the time with one of several elite PlayStation exclusives like Spider-Man, The Last of Us, Ghost of Tsushima, God of War, Horizon, Ratchet & Clank, and several others.

There’s a greater solution to all of this, and that’s just to do away with console exclusivity as a whole, but that’s likely not going to happen any time soon. It’s not even a guarantee that all these Xbox exclusives are going to make it to PlayStation, though, as Microsoft is only “considering” it at this time.