The path forward seems clear to me, just wait for the market to change where this strategy doesn't look weak, but rather a showcase of power. Heck, Sea of Thieves (an XGS game) topped PS5 charts despite being years old. It utterly embarrassed Skull and Bones. Microsoft as a whole now dominate the PS storefront and drive it between COD, Overwatch, ESO, F76, and Sea of Thieves. If gaming journalists used a metric of success other than exclusives they'd be singing praises instead of echoing fears.
Third party exclusives are dead and even timed exclusives aren't as numerous as in the past. For the most part multiplatform releases don't just strive for parity but even features like cross play and cross save across platforms. If we just consider the first party margins that leaked from Sony, exclusives just aren't that economically sound anymore. They aren't really driving new hardware (an argument can be made exclusives and other walls between platforms just made consoles look less accessible from non gamers; general audiences complain about flipping between streaming services for their originals... why would anyone want to flip between hardware that costs hundreds to pay for exclusives). Sony is holding because they're Sony, but even they've had to make major changes in their business to deal with increasingly small margins. That's ultimately led to unprecedentedly holding on console price, raising price in some regions, and the most expensive pro model they've done. It's also led to PC ports and day one PC releases and even Switch releases for Lego Horizon. They seem to see Xbox as their bitter rival far more than Xbox does. If I were Microsoft I'd start to get in talks with Sony leadership moving forward about tearing down those walls. They really just stifle gaming and tribal BS has been the downfall of the console market. But I think if they continue to onesidely make efforts to evolve the console market, well they'll be seen as swimming against the tide. I'd argue they should just try to change the direction the tide itself is going.
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