Xbox “Player Voice” Forum Sparks Outcry for Exclusives and Free Online Multiplayer

On May 18, Microsoft announced the Xbox Player Voice initiative, a new feedback hub where players could suggest features they wanted to see in the Xbox ecosystem and vote on suggestions provided by others—somewhat similar to a traditional forum or even a GitHub discussions page. Almost 10 days on from that launch, and the top-requested features have become overwhelmingly clear. Based on the top three upvoted topics on the board, players are desperate for basic console features. Specifically, Xbox players want exclusives, free online multiplayer access, and backwards compatibility, each of which has well over 15,000 upvotes in support.

The topic discussing Xbox exclusives has, at the time of writing, over 20,000 upvotes, putting it in the top spot on the forum. While Microsoft has yet to officially respond to the request for exclusives, the gaming giant’s new CEO, Asha Sharma, has previously stated that the company was reconsidering its approach to exclusives and game publishing in general, as part of her “return to Xbox” plan. Given the PC-console hybrid direction Xbox Gaming has been going lately, which has been reinforced by what Xbox revealed about Project Helix, any Xbox exclusives will also be available on PC at launch. In the thread arguing for exclusives, players have commented that “without exclusive games, there is not enough value to buy an Xbox,” with other gamers explicitly calling for console-only exclusives that would not be available on PC. Others argued that, in the current gaming market, missing out on a multi-platform launch could cost Xbox Gaming money instead. Others seem to be engaging in console war shenanigans, arguing that if Sony is removing PlayStation games from PC and Xbox, Xbox should remove its games from the PS5.

Currently, Xbox players need an Xbox Game Pass subscription in order to play non-free multiplayer games online, which means they will need to pay a minimum of $9.99 monthly for a Game Pass Essential subscription. Some comments in the thread asking Microsoft to introduce free multiplayer have also suggested that something similar to timed monthly free online play time or free online multiplayer on weekends. As was the case with exclusives, Microsoft has not yet publicly issued a response to the request for free online play, but previous reports claimed as many as 35 million players subscribed to Game Pass in one form or another, and it’s likely that at least a few of those players would end up cancelling their subscriptions if they no longer needed to pay to play something like Arc Raiders or Helldivers 2 online. The discussion surrounding the inclusion of free multiplayer veered into the topic of game ownership, while some argued that if PC players can play Xbox games online for free, console players should be able to as well.

Coming in third place with 15,703 votes is a discussion surrounding backwards compatibility, requesting Xbox return the focus on backwards compatibility of games on Xbox. While there are a number of games from as far back as the Xbox 360 and original Xbox that are playable on the Xbox Series X|S, players have noted that they own game discs of games that were exclusive to older Xbox consoles are non-functional on the Xbox Series consoles—specific examples include Cars: The Video Game, Project Gotham Racing, the original Forza Motorsport, Rallisport Challenge, and even Halo 2 and Halo Combat Evolved. The argument seems to be that there should be universal backwards compatibility instead of the current selective implementation. In previous reports, it was all but confirmed that backwards compatibility will be a feature on the Xbox Project Helix, and a recent leak revealed that Xbox was seemingly working on a new disc-to-digital entitlement program that would allow players to access physical copies of games on the new console, which is thought to be launching without a disc drive.