


But when I think about expanding the creative palette that our teams have, I think that is critically important. We obviously have Minecraft and we have some other franchises. E-rated content (to use an ESRB rating) is not a strength for us. If we look at what people are playing on Xbox, what Game Pass subscribers are playing, I think what is missing from our portfolio is casual content with a broad appeal. So I'm feeling very good with the support we have.Īre you content with the current line-up now, or is there a chink in the armor somewhere? A certain genre, a certain type of studio that you feel is still missing? Now with ZeniMax we're coming up on 23 first-party studios and an amazing line-up. And then we built a business model that prioritised investing in content knowing that we would have to invest early and wait a while for those investments to pay off.īut there wasn't kind of a "one morning." It was something that I felt, as I said through the late 360 and early Xbox One years, it just took us a little time to get into a position to find the right partners and get the support from the company. So when I got into this job, I needed to put the business in a good space while getting the support of the company.

I wanted to invest more, and we weren't able to. I had this feeling or belief that we were underinvesting and I was head of first-party, so I felt it directly. It's maybe three, four, or five years down the road. Now, the thing with game production is that it takes a lot of time, so if you underinvest it actually doesn't show up next year or even in the next two years. If I think back during the early Xbox One years and even late in the 360 years, at this time we as a company didn't invest enough in our creative capabilities with our studios, and it showed. If you, however, fancy some reading, below is a slightly edited version of our interesting conversation, where we got to know more about his thoughts surrounding some of the more pressing topics on gamer's minds today.īefore the first round of purchasing studios - what made you get up one morning and say "we need more studios, we need more first-party games"?
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Rosy words, sure, but credit where credit is due, Spencer and his global team has worked hard to turn the ship around in recent years, and through the launch of Xbox Series X, and Series S, as well as the plan to acquire Zenimax, his vision for the brand, is coming full circle.īut what about the future? Well, we recently had a chat with the man himself about first-party games, monetisation, development pipelines, and much, much more, and you can take a look at that interview below.
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It's equally hard not to give Spencer credit, regardless of one's perspective and platform allegiance, seeing as Xbox Game Pass is a runaway hit for consumers across the globe, xCloud is presenting a convenient and consumer-friendly cloud solution to players on Android (and perhaps soon iOS), and there's a renewed focus on software through a number of studio acquisitions. After all, he has, in a few short years at the top, shaped the brand, the platform, in such a way that it's quite unrecognisable next to the Xbox One that Don Mattrick introduced in May 2013. At this point in time, it's hard to imagine Xbox without Phil Spencer.
