Former Blizzard president and Xbox exec Mike Ybarra has commented on Xbox president Sarah Bond’s comments on exclusive games being “antiquated,” citing Nintendo’s success with the strategy.
Xbox has been slowly but surely getting out of being a proper platform. While the company still makes hardware, for years all of its games have no longer been console exclusive, with simultaneous PC launches. More recently, almost everything is coming to rival consoles too, with its big 2025 exclusives Doom: The Dark Ages, The Outer Worlds 2, and Ninja Gaiden 4 all being day-one releases on PS5.
In a recent interview, Xbox president Sarah Bond called exclusive games “antiquated,” citing community-led games like Fortnite, Roblox, and Minecraft.
Naturally, Bond’s comment was met with some feedback. One name mentioning it was former president of Blizzard Entertainment Mike Ybarra, who hasn’t exactly been quiet on his thoughts on some of the recent decisions at Xbox, like saying “your console is dead” in response to an Xbox user, negatively reacting to the “this is an Xbox” campaign, and saying going back to exclusives was the only way Xbox can become a regular console again.
Someone go tell Nintendo that exclusives are antiquated.October 23, 2025
Ybarra responds to Bond’s comments, saying: “Someone go tell Nintendo that exclusives are antiquated.” And when someone responded by calling Nintendo – which just launched the fastest-selling console ever, for what it’s worth – antiquated, Ybarra adds: “Nintendo has continually dominated with outstanding games. Sure some platforms flopped, but they always took risks and came back very strong. It is the opposite of antiquated. It is risk and return.”
And he’s right, even though the GameCube and Wii U underperformed, neither was hurting for banger games.
