Microsoft is also determined not to have a mobile version of every Xbox franchise.
Let’s start with skipping the Activision Blizzard king’s 2023 Game Pass expansion, which Xbox CEO Phil Spencer talked about on the official Xbox podcast: “When we closed the Bethesda acquisition, there was this great moment. We got to put a bunch of their back catalog games [on Game Pass] and celebrate their history. The truth is, with Activision Blizzard King, the regulatory process took so long. And frankly, there was a lot of uncertainty in that process until really a week before we closed, or the week that the CMA finally made their decision, that we couldn’t get to work on the back catalog. So now that the deal is done, we’re starting that work. But there is work. And I think the Activision Twitter handle put out a statement talking about 2024. I think that’s accurate. I would love it if there was some kind of secret celebration drop coming in the next few weeks. There isn’t. Definitely, when we think about the new games that are out there, I would be honest with people. If we were going to put them in the subscription this year, I would tell people. And I know there’s going to be some disappointment about that. This acquisition is definitely long-term for Microsoft, so the fact that we’re not going to have a bunch of games coming to Game Pass on day one is a little bit of a downer, but I’m very excited about the future. And I just want to be honest with people that that’s where we are,” said Spencer, who also flew to Stockholm to meet with the King team and will visit with Activision and Blizzard executives next week.
And here’s how he hinted at a mobile future: “There’s just no way to really chart the future without being on the platform that most of the planet plays on. The games are different, the business models are different, the whole dynamic of how you distribute, how you find games is different. So when I looked at that, I had to find a team that’s had amazing success that we could learn from. So we literally – Amy Hood, who’s the CFO of Microsoft, and I – we went through a list of the most successful publishers in the mobile space. And most people wouldn’t have expected, I think I didn’t, that Activision would have been so high up, with the King work, as well as the Call of Duty mobile work, Warzone stuff that they’ve done, Diablo Immortal. And so I want to go and learn from those teams because I think it’s critical for us to deliver on the full promise of over two billion people playing, the opportunity to reach more of the three billion people who play video games, to reach more and more people, that people who only play on their phones find Xbox to be something that’s interesting to them. It doesn’t mean that I want to make all of our franchises mobile franchises.
It doesn’t mean that everything is going to be free-to-play. I think the diversity of distribution and business models that we have is a strength of the platform. People who want to buy games, I love that. People who want to subscribe to their games, that’s great. Free-to-play games are also great. But I’m really looking forward to learning on mobile, because the truth of the matter is, if you want to continue to be relevant in gaming on a global scale, you have to find a way to be relevant on the biggest platform, which is mobile,” Spencer added.
So it could happen that Microsoft could compete with the Google Play Store and Apple App Store with a next-generation store, as the company talked about a “new mobile Xbox platform” if they own Activision’s Blizzard King.
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