Xbox boss wants Microsoft to use its own IP instead of licensing others’ games for Xbox…

In a chat with Game File editor Stephen Totilo, Phil Spencer revealed that he would rather tap into the Redmond company’s vast IP portfolio than license intellectual property from others: “I’m not the biggest fan [of making licensed games]. It creates some complexity for us when we think about putting it into a subscription or streaming. We’ve seen it with racing games that have to be delisted because you lose certain licenses. So I’m always very careful that if we’re going to take a license, that we’re doing it for creative reasons, that the team has a goal for what they want to do,” Spencer said.

Of course, Microsoft is currently working on two licensed games. MachineGames has Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and Arkane Lyon is working on Marvel’s Blade. Both IPs are owned by Disney. He also mentioned the Microsoft-Disney partnership: “I feel very good about our partnership with LucasFilm Games and Disney. They’ve been good partners. We’re obviously doing Blade with Arkane Lyon with them. I was just out there visiting with that team.

I think what you see with Indiana Jones is a team that really loves Indiana Jones and this world. The story to me is one of the strongest parts of the game, the way you feel like you’re Indiana Jones from a first-person perspective. So it’s clear that’s something they wanted to do. But for us, given the intellectual property that we have that we own. I’m a big fan of us using the IP that we haven’t even revisited,” Spencer added.

Disney doesn’t tend to let IP go cheaply, while Microsoft has plenty of IP to work with (Banjo-Kazooie, Conker, Killer Instinct: just a few of the names the Redmond-based company acquired through the Rare acquisition more than 20 years ago)…

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