PS5 should make more exclusives now while Xbox has ‘blood in the water’ says ex-Blizzard boss-GameCentral-Entertainment – Metro

God Of War Ragnarök – why isn’t PlayStation being more aggressive while Xbox flounders? (Sony Interactive Entertainment)

The former boss of Blizzard has criticised Xbox for ‘pushing a narrative’ about the death of consoles and advised Sony to take advantage.

As with any business, the people in charge of the games industry often seem very disconnected from those that make or use their products. Former Blizzard Entertainment boss Mike Ybarra was roundly mocked for some of his recent ideas about tipping in games, and how upset Xbox boss Phil Spencer was about job layoffs, but his new comments about Xbox and PlayStation 5 are being treated a lot more seriously.

Although he wasn’t laid off, Ybarra left Blizzard at the same time as the layoffs earlier in the year and initially seemed very defensive of Spencer. His attitude seems to have changed this week though, with a scathing, if impersonal, attack on Xbox’s current policies.

‘If your strategy is to win the living room, you need exclusive hits because winning is both a platform and games perspective,’ he said on Twitter. ‘Sony knows how to make hits, and how to pick the hits from others to be exclusive. If I was them, I would double down right now because the blood in the water is all over the place.’

Spencer, and the rest of his executive team, have tried to paint the Xbox’s current problems, including ailing console sales, as an industry wide problem, implying that both consoles and format exclusives have only a limited future.

According to Ybarra though, ‘I think those losing push the narrative that fits for them. Consoles will never die, in my opinion.’

With the Nintendo Switch confirmed as one of the best-selling consoles of all time and the PlayStation 4 and 5’s success built upon quality first party exclusives, the problems at Xbox are not necessarily shared by all console manufacturers.

The issue of AAA games becoming too expensive to produce is a universal issue but that’s not something which Ybarra disputes.

His comments recall the time that Phil Spencer insisted that ‘great games’ would not help the success of the Xbox format, despite that being precisely what the success of Nintendo and PlayStation is built on.

Ybarra’s advice is that with Microsoft struggling to settle on a clear multiformat policy Sony should take advantage and release more exclusives, to emphasise the difference between the two formats.

It’s certainly been puzzling that Sony has not already taken this obvious advice, with the majority of PlayStation 5 exclusives in the last year being paid-for third party titles.

But then Sony has been having their own internal problems, with their planned focus on live service games floundering before it began, especially with the disastrous release of Concord.

Although Ybarra’s comments are unexpectedly negative with regards to Xbox, he also implicitly criticises Sony’s current obsession with live service games, stating ‘I would stop the all in approach on this. Players are tired of battle passes and $18 skins.’

Many of his comments echo those that have been made by others for the last several months but it’s unusual to see them being made by such a high-profile executive, who until recently seemed very supportive of Xbox.

Ybarra is now CEO of fantasy sports company PrizePicks, and as such is no longer part of the traditional video games industry, which has likely made him less concerned about how his comments will be received.

Astro Bot is thankfully not a live service game (Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter, and sign-up to our newsletter.

To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.

For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.Entertainment – MetroRead More