New game from Modern Warfare creators is an Xbox/PC exclusive

In the coming console wars, small differences between multiplatform games probably aren't going to be enough to give a system a significant advantage over another. It's the exclusive titles that are going to largely determine the winner in the next-gen console battle. Which is why today's leaked announcement that Respawn Entertainment's Titanfall will be exclusive to Microsoft systems and PCs is such a big deal.

Microsoft was rumored to have picked up the exclusive console rights to Respawn's online-focused first-person mech shooter back in April, and that information has now been confirmed in the latest issue of Game Informer, which leaked out in digital form via Google Play today. While Respawn is working on the Xbox One and PC versions, an Xbox 360 version is also being developed by an outside developer.

The article also reveals the Titanfall name for the first time and a spring 2014 release window. Titanfall will use a heavily modified version of Valve's Source engine to produce 60 fps performance, according to the article.

In choosing the Xbox One over the PS4, Respawn cited Microsoft's promised access to cloud-computing resources, which will reportedly allow the game to use "unlimited dedicated servers" (whatever that means) to offload dozens of physics and AI routines. This helps offset the smaller amount of RAM available to developers on the Xbox One (5GB vs. 8GB in the PS4), though the developer says it was having problems using even that amount efficiently at this stage. "Not to say we won't [go multiplatform] in the future, but for our first game we wanted to focus on making the best game we could," the developer is quoted as saying.

Any console exclusive is important in this day and age, but Titanfall has the potential to be a big system seller for a large number of shooter fans. After all, it's coming from the founders of Infinity Ward and the original creators of the best-selling Modern Warfare series, who split off from Activision in acrimony back in 2010. True, Activision still holds the all-important Call of Duty branding, but you can bet that the marketing push for this one will stress that Titanfall is the true inheritor of the Modern Warfare legacy.

For its part, Activision is leaning on its partnership with Bungie for its own new shooter IP, Destiny. And while that game is going to be a big part of Sony's pre-E3 press conference, it's currently also slated for release on the Xbox One and Xbox 360 as well. Sony would do well to have at least one big PS4 exclusive third-party game announcement to counter Microsoft's big get.