Yesterday was an interesting day for Xbox. The company hosted a special edition of the Xbox Official Podcast on Thursday where Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft Gaming, Sarah Bond, President of Xbox, and Matt Booty, Head of Xbox Game Studios, talked about what the future of the platform will look like.
While there was a ton of hype around what Xbox leadership would announce at the event including new hardware, new titles, and bringing some titles to other platforms. While there weren’t any huge reveals on the episode, we did learn some things.
New games and new consoles are on the way
Phil Spencer did reveal that the company would be bringing four formerly exclusive Xbox titles to PlayStation and Nintendo. While he did not say what titles those would be, he did squash rumors that it would include Starfield or the upcoming Indiana Jones game. We also learned that Activision Blizzard games will be coming to Game Pass, the company’s game subscription service. Diablo 4 will be the first title to launch on the service on March 28, 2024. More will follow, but Spencer and team did not give us a hint of what to expect next.
Sarah Bond also eased those who worried that Xbox was abandoning consoles, saying that “there’s some exciting stuff coming out in hardware that we’re going to share this holiday. We’re also invested in the next-generation roadmap. And what we’re really focused on there is delivering the largest technical leap you will have ever seen in a hardware generation, which makes it better for players and better for creators and the visions that they’re building.”
Personally, I’m waiting for the official Xbox handheld console. While third-party company’s like Asus and Lenovo are making the first, I’d love to see one made by Microsoft itself. Get that Surface team together and build the Nintendo Switch of Xbox!
Spencer’s internal memo
For those who want to dig into as much news as possible about the future of Xbox, the podcast may have not felt like enough. I get it. I’m one of those people too. Thankfully, The Verge got their hands on an internal memo that was sent by Phil Spencer himself to Microsoft employees.
While the memo does not include any new announcements, it does confirm that Spencer’s long term vision for the future of Xbox is one where every screen is an Xbox — even if that screen is powered by a PlayStation or a Nintendo console. According to Spencer, “this is a future where Xbox is everywhere.”
You can read the entire memo from Spencer to Microsoft employees below:
Today at noon Pacific, we’ll be posting a special episode of the Official Xbox Podcast.
In this episode, Sarah Bond, Matt Booty and I will share with the community our plans for the future of Xbox. We’ll also discuss how our vision will benefit our players, creators, and the industry as a whole.
When we look at the state of our medium, we see players increasingly gaming on multiple devices, but their experience is defined by the fragmentation created by platform silos. Multi-device players have to navigate multiple identities, entitlement libraries, communities, wallets, and reward programs. Similarly, the industry’s biggest franchises increasingly ship across multiple devices, requiring creators to build and manage multiple instances of their games, leading to higher costs and fragmented communities. All of this friction creates a tremendous opportunity for us to meet the needs of multi-device players and creators.
We have a different vision for the future of gaming. A future where players have a unified experience across devices. A future where players can easily discover a vast array of games with a diverse spectrum of business models. A future where more creators are empowered to realize their creative vision, reach a global audience, unite their communities, and succeed commercially. A future where every screen is an Xbox.
This is a future where Xbox is everywhere—consistent with our promise to empower players to “play the games you want, with the people you want, anywhere you want.”
If you want to watch the entire episode of the podcast, check it out below:
