The Redmond-based company, Microsoft is quite confident about the Xbox Project Scarlett, too.

Xbox Game Studios currently consists of fifteen studios (Xbox Game Studios Publishing, Turn 10 Studios, 343 Industries, The Coalition, The Initiative, World’s Edge, Rare, Mojang, Ninja Theory, inXile Entertainment, Obsidian Entertainment, Compulsion Games, Undead Labs, Playground Games) – Microsoft acquired the last seven on the list in the past 1.5 years. But they plan to go further.

„Eurogamer: You have 15 studios now. You’ve been on an impressive acquisition spree. Are you done now?

Phil Spencer: No! I do think we can sometimes get a little infatuated with putting a bunch of studio logos on a slide and that becomes the news. They’re not trading cards. They’re studios. And we want them to build great games. I love the fact we’re here announcing three new IP, two from our internal studios. As I look forward, there’s not a show I can look at where we’re not gonna be announcing new games, just because of the breadth of studios we have. It’s not some kind of PR battle about how many new acquisitions we can put on stage. Because if we’re not building great games, the acquisitions don’t matter. But are we done? I don’t think so.

EG: You’re still on the hunt then?

PS: Yeah. There are great creators out there. Our business continues to grow. The company is incredibly supportive of what we’re trying to build. Microsoft talks about gaming as a key pillar of its consumer interest and its strategy. We’re getting a tonne of support from Satya Nadella, Amy Hood, and the board. And we’re running a good business today, so we’ve earned the right to continue to look.

EG: What are you looking for?

PS: I look at the geographic diversity of our studios. I love the fact we now have three studios here in the UK. You can go back decades… you could argue the U.K. is as strong as any country in terms of its impact on the history of video games. I love that we’re here in such strength. Now we have studios in Canada, studios in other parts of the U.S., I think we have a hole in Asia. I’ve said that both to [Xbox Game Studios head] Matt [Booty] and publicly. I would love to have more of an influence in our first-party team from Asian creators. There’s nothing imminent, so it’s not a pre-announce of something. But if you just plotted where we are on the map with our first-party, that’s a real opportunity for us. I love the fact we can stand here and announce Yakuza and Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy coming. That’s through third-party relationships, which take time. And we’ve been focused on that. But I think we could have stronger first-party creation capability there. We have in the past and I think we should again,” quoting a Eurogamer interview with Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox.

Microsoft is indeed confident: „We feel confident about our content pipeline so that we feel we don’t need to save everything up for that [Xbox Project Scarlett] beat. What’s important to understand is that we are 18 months in on Game Pass. Netflix is over ten years old. If you were to go back and look at some of the things that Netflix did in their first two years, it’s easy for people to forget now because it’s been so long, but you couldn’t turn around sideways without seeing a Netflix ad for this promotional offer, or that promotional offer… It was almost as bad as the AOL disk. I’d go pick up my chicken sandwich at the restaurant and it comes with a free AOL disk. Everything was about a free month of Netflix. I think that as a subscription service emerges and grows that there are different ways of promoting it at different times. We’re just in a different phase. They have challenges that are different from what we have right now. There’s so much talk about Disney Plus and they’ve got a world of challenges there. For us, we need to do the right marketing from where we are in the lifecycle of our subscription,” Booty told Gamesindustry in an interview.

Spencer also talked with The Verge that they won’t be out of position with the Xbox Project Scarlett when it comes to its price and power: „I would say learning from the Xbox One generation is we will not be out of position on power or price. If you remember the beginning of this generation we were a hundred dollars more expensive [mostly due to forcing everyone to buy a Kinect before it got ditched – the ed.] and yes, we were less powerful. And we started Project Scarlett with this leadership team in place to have market success. We had the discussion years ago ‘do we want to go do another generation?’ Yes, and do we think there will be multiple generations ahead of us? I think there probably is. So we’re going all in. We’re all-in on Project Scarlett and I want to compete, and I want to compete in the right ways which are why we’re focused on cross-play and backward compatibility.”

He also brought up the possibility of a stronger Discord integration (this software is essentially a Skype replacement): „Yeah, I do think so. I think it’s more difficult because the voice codecs are different. It’s not as easy as a phone system where everybody’s kind of on the same backend. I think over time it’s a benefit to all of us. Just like how I think cross-play is important, cross-talk — if you want to use that as a term — is something I think we should be focused on.”

Also, let’s talk about Project xCloud, which will be integrated into the Xbox Game Pass. Until then, it’s being tested in South Korea, the UK, and the US. Shortly, a lot of games will be added to the preview, meaning more than the first-party titles will be streamable. These games are coming: Absolver (Devolver Digital), Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown (Bandai Namco), Ark: Survival Evovled (Studio Wildcard), Battle Chasers: Nightwar (THQ Nordic), Black Desert Online (Pearl Abyss), Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (505 Games), Borderlands: The Handsome Collection (2K Games), Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (505 Games), Conan Exiles (Funcom), Crackdown (Xbox Game Studios), Darksiders 3 (THQ Nordic), Dead Island: Definitive Edition (Koch Media), Devil May Cry 5 (Capcom), F1 2019 (Codemasters), For The King (Curve Digital), Forza Horizon 4 (Xbox Game Studios), Gears of War: Ultimate Edition (Xbox Game Studios), Halo Wars 2 (Xbox Game Studios), Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (Xbox Game Studios), Hello Neighbour (TinyBuild), Hitman (IO Interactive), Just Cause 4 (Square Enix), Madden NFL 20 (Electronic Arts), Mark of the Ninja: Remastered (Klei Entertainment), Mutant Year Zero (Funcom), Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition (Xbox Game Studios), Overcooked (Team17), Puyo Puyo Champions (Sega), RAD (Bandai Namco), Recore: Definitive Edition (Xbox Game Studios), Shadow of the Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition (Square Enix), Sniper Elite 4 (Rebellion), SoulCalibur VI (Bandai Namco), State of Decay 2 (Xbox Game Studios), Subnautica (Unknown Worlds), Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition (Bandai Namco), Tekken 7 (Bandai Namco), Tera (Krafton), The Bard’s Tale IV: Director’s Cut (Xbox Game Studios), theHunter: Call of the Wild (Avalanche Studios), Vampyr (Focus Home Interactive), Vermintide 2 (Fatshark Games), World of Final Fantasy Maxima (Square Enix), World of Tanks: Mercenaries (Wargaming), World of Warships: Legends (Wargaming), World War Z (Mad Dog Games), WRC 7 (Bigben Interactive), WWE 2K20 (2K Games), Yoku’s Island Express (Team17).

So 49 titles are added to the xCloud, which isn’t bad. More invites are sent out to those who previously registered for testing. In 2020, the plans wish to expand the testing to Canada, India, Japan, and Western Europe. They also want to bring the service to Windows 10 PCs. Microsoft is „collaborating with a broad set of partners to make game streaming available on other devices as well.” From 2020, Razer’s Bluetooth controllers, and even Sony’s DualShock 4 will be supported. There are plans to enable Xbox owners to stream any games they already own. This option will be enabled with future purchases. Xbox Game Pass subscribers will also have the ability to stream titles from that game collection.

So Microsoft is playing with open cards.

Source: Gematsu, WCCFTech, WCCFTech, Gamesindustry

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