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Microsoft’s gaming chief on Xbox games coming to PS5, next-gen hardware, and more
Microsoft wants to grow Xbox in new ways.
www.theverge.com
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Why is publishing more games on multiple platforms key to improving the long-term success of Xbox?
The games themselves have just a great opportunity to grow. When you find a successful game that’s working, that’s finding great customers on our Xbox console, on PC, you think about how do I make sure those game franchises continue to grow? We can invest in them, they can continue to thrive and find new customers. The software part of the business is an easier part of the business to grow and scale. It becomes more about access, both how do the bits actually get to the screen and even some business model access.
For us, it’s Game Pass plus retail. There’s obviously plenty of free-to-play games on Xbox, but I’d say that business model diversity of giving people more choice and how they build their library, our platform needs to enable those things. And then I think the games themselves on top of that have just an incredible opportunity to reach the billions of players that are out there. You can see something like the launch of Palworld in the last month, right? It’s effectively one game that was built, they continue to update it, and it’s finding just massive numbers of players on Xbox and PC. Games just have that ability to continue to grow, and we want to make sure that our games as part of Xbox are one of the strongest parts of what Xbox is about.
You mentioned that Starfield and Indiana Jones aren’t part of the four despite rumors, but will those ever come to PS5? Can you rule that out?
I don’t think we should as an industry ever rule out a game going to any other platform. We’re focused on these four games and learning from the experience.
But I don’t want to create a false expectation on those other platforms that this is somehow the first four to get over the dam and then the dam’s going to open and that everything else is coming, that’s not the plan today. I also don’t want to mislead customers on those other platforms. We’re launching these four games, and we’re excited about it. We’re excited about the announce and everything else, but we’ll see what happens for our business.
Obviously you saw the Xbox fan reaction to some of the rumors, people worried about their digital library and the future of the console. How are you going to keep those fans, and keep the Xbox ecosystem alive?
I always take the feedback from our most ardent fans very seriously. We’re coming out of a December where we had our highest Xbox engagement ever in the history of the console, more players than we’ve ever had.
Update added article...
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Read Phil Spencer’s Microsoft memo on “Xbox everywhere”
Microsoft gets ready for a future of Xbox games everywhere.
www.theverge.com
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