Rebooting the system

Summer Game Fest reveals a game industry in retreat, leaning into its past

At this year’s Xbox FanFest in LA, anyone with a ‘fan’ badge has been earmarked to receive a retro-styled Xbox Series X25 to celebrate Microsoft’s 25 years in the console business. The message is plain: remember the good old days of Xbox? “It has been a wild ride,” says CEO Asha Sharma. “Let’s acknowledge all of the great games. How about those exclusives?” Earlier in the morning, as part of its showcase on the third day of Summer Game Fest, Xbox has confirmed that Gears Of War: E-Day will no longer be coming to PlayStation 5 – it is now for Xbox and PC players only. Announced in 2023, Clockwork Revolution, by InXile Entertainment, is also remaining an Xbox exclusive.

Chief content officer Matt Booty will later outline Xbox’s exclusivity policy in more detail, explaining that the company will decide which games to release on multiple platforms and which to keep to itself on a “case-by-case” basis. Nevertheless, as of sundown on June 7, Xbox’s plan seems as solid and clear as the X25 chassis: appeal to history and nostalgia, hit hard with the firstparty properties, and regain a strong sense of the core brand in the process. It might not be an original idea, but it feels like a way of regrouping the Xbox project after the freewheeling and identity-eroding era of Phil Spencer and Sarah Bond.

And it is perhaps also a message that will resonate with players. Among the audience at the opening Summer Game Fest showcase, the loudest whoops arrive in response to sequel-remakes Resident Evil Veronica and Final Fantasy VII Revelation. “This is gaming!” one especially animated attendee, sitting two seats away from our position, repeatedly yells in response to Cloud and Tifa’s return. “This is gaming!”