Everything's an Xbox.
Xbox head Phil Spencer has said Microsoft’s gaming brand is “evolving” and will move beyond console exclusives.
In conversation with Destin Legarie, Spencer said, “there’s no reason for me to put a ring fence around any game and say, ‘this game will not go to a place where it would find players, where it would have business success for us’.”
“Our strategy is to allow our games to be available,” he added. “Game Pass is an important component of playing the games on our platform, but to keep games off other platforms? We don’t think is the path… that’s not a path for us. It doesn’t work for us.”
Spencer said that titles like Starfield, a current Xbox console exclusive, wouldn’t necessarily remain that way.
“What we’re doing now we think really enables us to build the best platform for the world’s best games,” Spencer explained. “‘Cause the world’s biggest games are available in multiple places, and more and more creators are asking us, how do we stay connected when our game might be playable in all these different places, and we want Xbox to be absolutely the platform that enables that.
“We think that makes us unique. Most of the other platforms out there are single platform on single device, whether that’s PC, whether that’s mobile, whether it’s a console.”
Spencer also addressed concerns that this multiplatform approach may dilute the Xbox brand itself, following a marketing campaign that named a bunch of traditionally non-Xbox devices as Xboxes.
“I’m pretty active in our player base, and I’m active in the community. I listen. I think our identity will continue to evolve, which, frankly, it always has,” he said. “But when I hear concerns, I hear concerns about is: my library of games safe. Am I still going to be able to play the games. And I think over the years, I’m proud of the commitment we’ve shown to respecting purchases on our platform through back compat, through cross entitlement, Xbox Play Anywhere, through crossplay. Things that we’ve done to enable people to continue to play, so I hear that.”
We’ll let you know when the next big Xbox multiplatform announcement is made. While we wait, do you think we’ll see Xbox games on Switch 2? If so, which ones?
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