A handful of Xbox titles could quickly lose their exclusivity standing and transfer to platforms like PlayStation and Nintendo Change. Excellent news for gamers who personal these platforms. Not so for everybody. Moderately than rejoice that extra individuals might be able to get pleasure from their beloved video games, elements of the Xbox neighborhood are livid about what they contemplate a betrayal.

Over the previous month, the gaming world has been awash in hypothesis that titles like Sea of Thieves, Hello-Fi Rush, and now Indiana Jones and the Nice Circle will now not be out there solely on Xbox. “A brand new multiplatform strategy for sure Xbox video games is rising inside Microsoft,” The Verge wrote over the weekend, ”with the corporate weighing up which titles will stay unique and [which] will seem on Change or PS5 sooner or later.”

In the meanwhile, these rumors are simply that. That hasn’t stopped some members of the Xbox fan neighborhood, together with influencers, from withdrawing their help or outright declaring the platform useless. As noticed by VGC, a number of notable fan accounts are already protesting with movies and posts on X. In one video, creator Riskit4theBiskit proclaims he’ll “have to course of this” and says he’s getting off X for the day. “If that is true, I believe it’s an enormous misstep,” he provides. “I believe as a fan and a supporter of the model for 20 years, I’ve put lots of of 1000’s of {dollars} into this model over time. It does really feel like a little bit of a betrayal.” Others are posting receipts from buying and selling of their Xbox consoles.

The fan response has been so excessive that late Monday Xbox head Phil Spencer addressed the neighborhood instantly. “We’re listening and we hear you,” Spencer tweeted. “We have been planning a enterprise replace occasion for subsequent week, the place we look ahead to sharing extra particulars with you about our imaginative and prescient for the way forward for Xbox.”

Spencer’s assertion didn’t quell a lot. Shortly after it was posted, Xbox-focused account Klobrille, which has greater than 158,000 followers on X, posted that listening “won’t be sufficient,” and that Microsoft wanted to comply with via on “beforehand made statements.”

Additional replies to Spencer’s tweet proceed the refrain of dissatisfaction: “Bringing Xbox to multiplatform will devalue the platform, please don’t,” wrote one person. One other wrote that the transfer away from exclusives would let “the entire gaming world down.” Extra succinctly, one other: “F Xbox.”

Spencer has been clear for years that he’s hardly focused on interconsole battle. “We’re within the leisure enterprise. The largest competitor now we have is apathy over the services, video games that we construct,” he mentioned throughout a 2020 interview. Moreover, Spencer described such “tribalism” distastefully. “There’s a core that simply actually hates the opposite shopper product. Man, that’s simply so off-putting to me … To me, it’s one of many worst issues about our trade.”

Exclusivity hasn’t helped Microsoft beat its competitors, both. Final yr, throughout its court docket battle with the Federal Commerce Fee over its $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Microsoft mentioned in a court docket submitting that Xbox had “misplaced the console wars” and “has persistently ranked third (of three) behind PlayStation and Nintendo in gross sales.”

Throughout a listening to on the matter, when requested instantly if Xbox had misplaced mentioned wars, Spencer referred to them as “a social assemble throughout the neighborhood.”

Subsequent week, Spencer will presumably announce one thing certain to excite or enrage hardcore Xbox followers. No matter which approach it goes, the current dustup has demonstrated that model loyalty and console allegiance, taken to the acute, have birthed a poisonous tradition in gaming. There isn’t any superiority to be received by proudly owning a PlayStation or an Xbox; it’s a private selection greatest made when contemplating what specs, value, or different facilities work greatest for the person. Manufacturers, like firms, like jobs, won’t ever love you again. Microsoft’s play is to win eyeballs and generate profits—and by diversifying its choices, it actually will.