The head of Xbox, Phil Spencer is open to collaborating with other platform holders, such as Sony, to make the Xbox Game Pass available elsewhere.
The PlayStation strategy is clear: Sony Interactive Entertainment mainly develops single-player, story-focused titles via its studios. (We can list several franchises: Uncharted, Horizon, God of War, Marvel’s Spider-Man, Ghost of Tsushima, The Last of Us…) Meanwhile, Microsoft instead went on an acquisition spree, and their biggest catch was ZeniMax Media (which contained Bethesda and all its studios and their respective IPs…).
“Our strategy is not to just go be like someone else. I get a push sometimes of ‘where’s your version of this or that game?’. I’ve been in this industry for a long time, I have a ton of respect for creators on all platforms, and I know many of them.
But it’s good if we’re doing something different than what other platforms are doing. We’re not in the business of just trying to create a green version of somebody else’s blue or red coloured platform. That’s not the example of the creativity that I want to see in the games industry,” Phil Spencer said in an interview with GamesRadar.
What about the Xbox Game Pass? Phil Spencer revealed that his approach to it is the opposite: “You know, it’s the right question because people usually ask me about releasing one individual game or another. And what I say is I want the whole Xbox experience to be something that we deliver. We have no plans to bring [the Xbox App] to any other closed platforms right now, mainly because those closed platforms don’t want something like Xbox Game Pass. There are many open platforms for us to grow in: the web, PC, and mobile. So all of our focus, frankly, is on those platforms.
That’s not a slam on anybody else who has a system that works for them. I can see why the disruption of Game Pass is not something that they want right now. […] In the end, when we say we want everybody to be able to play on Xbox, we mean if we can bring that whole experience to a device that players wish to, we are open to those discussions,” Phil Spencer added.
So Microsoft is walking its unique path in game development, but the company is open to discussions with anyone when it comes to the Game Pass.
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