At Gamescom, Phil Spencer gave us more details on how he sees the changes he’s been making over the last six months or so and the results…

During the opening night show at Gamescom, Microsoft confirmed that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will be a timed Xbox exclusive, with a PlayStation 5 port confirmed alongside an Xbox Series/PC release date. In addition, DOOM: The Dark Ages is now officially getting a PS5 port, but we’ve also seen Hi-Fi Rush (with new owners), Sea of Thieves, and Pentiment, for example, leave exclusivity behind. In the case of Indy, however, Xbox boss Phil Spencer is taking a very different stance than he did in February. Why is that? Spencer talked about it in an interview.

“If you go back to the PlayStation announcement, obviously last spring we launched four games – two of them on Switch, four on PlayStation – and we said we’re going to learn. What I see when I look is that our franchise is getting stronger, our Xbox console players this year are the highest they’ve ever been, so I look at it and I say our player numbers are going up for the console platform, our franchise is as strong as it’s ever been… and we’re running a business. The last thing I’ll say is I think as an industry right now, there’s a lot of pressure on the industry. It’s been growing for a long time, and now people are looking for ways to grow,” Spencer said.

He’s taking the logical position that it’s good for business if their games aren’t exclusive to their own ecosystem. However, this console issue is interesting because we’ve heard in Europe that it’s not selling very well. Meanwhile, the Redmond giant will also have a few moments with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over the Game Pass price hike.

So Microsoft is taking it a little easier, which is a good idea, because there’s Sea of Thieves, for example, which was also the PlayStation Store frontrunner when the PlayStation 5 version of Rare’s pirate game was released.

Source: WCCFTech