The Best Games for Xbox in 2024 Are Not Exclusive to the Platform

Starfield: Shattered Space

could've been good. Unfortunately, it was far from it. In fact,

it's one of the worst games this year

, regardless of platform. Its awful critical performance puts Starfield and Bethesda Game Studios in a precarious spot as gamers now have lost hope about any potential reversal of Starfield's fate, akin to

Cyberpunk 2077

, after it showed signs of

finally living up to its potential

ahead of the expansion's release.

Avowed

could be good, and so could

Fable

, but the former is

already drawing flack for locking its FPS

at launch while the latter could still be years away, and at which point, it would have to be good enough to convince people to buy an Xbox when the next generation of consoles is just

right around the corner

—a tough ask considering PlayStation's treasure trove of exclusives grow by the day.

If it's any consolation, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is finally coming out in December and it should be pretty good. But again, it isn't going to be exclusive for long. In fact, don't expect it to sell well on Xbox as the best platform to enjoy MachineGames' upcoming title is the PlayStation 5 Pro.

The only selling point of the Xbox these days is as an alternative to PlayStation when it gets too expensive or when it's out of stock. It's good for the occassional surge in sales (just like what happened in Japan) but it's far from sustainable nor reliable. Not to mention, what manufacturer would settle for their product to be the alternative, cheaper product?

With Halo now hinting at going multiplatform after confirming its move to Unreal Engine 5, the rest of Xbox's first-party franchises could follow suit in the next few years. This would eventually leave the console market with only two major players: PlayStation and Nintendo.

Considering Nintendo is perfectly content doing its own thing, PlayStation, with its pseudo monopoly and Xbox's subtle pivot towards third-party publishing, is a recipe for disaster for us consumers. We can only hope that Sony won't abuse this by relying too much on unwanted remakes and remasters.

In other news, Square Enix's multiplatform strategy isn't off to a good start. Final Fantasy 16, one of the best selling games on PlayStation 5 last year, failed to make an impression in its PC debut.