Phil Spencer on exclusivity, monetisation and game development

Yeah, this part is awesome. BGS is still my favorite studio, the feeling I had with Oblivion, Fallout 3 and then Skyrim is just amazing. One misstep with 76 won’t have me losing faith in them. Howard getting to make the best games they can under Xbox now…the sky is the limit because you can bet your ass their budget will be humongous.

It’s simpler than that, for me and I think Phil addressed it.

As it stands today, MS do not own Zenimax. As such, he cannot legally dictate anything about where games go. Certainly not publicly. Once the sale goes through i think we will hear definitive statements.

On that basis, I do not think we’ll hear anything about Starfield etc. until the sale has gone through. But e3 2021? Definitely.

If MS do have any kind of reveal/event just before launch, or even show new games at VGS, it won’t be of a Zenimax game…apart from maybe Deathloop/Ghostwire Tokyo as their terms have already been made known.

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Yeah, I think it’s pretty simple at this point. Honestly, I thought it was great hearing the expected conclusion of the deal in early 2021. I’ve been saying as such, given Microsoft’s previous precedence of announcing acquisition intent when it’s near completion, but there were some voices thinking it wouldn’t be til the end of 2021. Ultimately, that means that those statements and additional announcements are going to be coming in hot after that point.

The future of xbox looks great :smiley:

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It looks like the moves from google, Apple, Facebook and amazon to bring gaming to the vloud wss the best thing that could happen to xbox and Phil Spencer. Microsoft now accepts that gaming is a key for the future

While he can’t say exclusive, he does later on say there aren’t any plans for Game Pass on other platforms. He makes it very clear when he keeps mentioning their ecosystem. So if no GP on Switch or PS, the only way for a Starfield to come to PS would be outside of GP and that ain’t happening. And in the part about exclusivity he makes it quite clear. It’s all about Game Pass, XCloud, Xbox the console and android and ios.

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It’s crazy that this seemingly isn’t even being talked about (that we know of). There is no franchise that would be better suited for xCloud.

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Yeah, it’s totally up to each studio, and I know some people that, when they’ve looked at the model around Game Pass, have assumed that Game Pass is actually a better model, if there’s more Games-as-a-Service games in the subscription. I actually argue the opposite and believe the opposite. The last thing I want in Game Pass is that there’s one game that everybody is playing forever, that’s not a gaming content subscription, that’s a one-game subscription, that’s WoW, right? So for us, having games in the subscription that have a beginning, middle, and end, and then they go on to play the next game, maybe those are single-player narrative-driven games, I just finished Tell Me Why, an amazing game from DontNod, those games can be really strong for us in the subscription. In many ways, they’re actually better than one or two games that are soaking up all the engagement in the subscription. I want a long tail of a lot of games that people are playing, and I think the diversity of online multiplayer versus single-player, we have to support the diversity there, and that’s my goal. If anything I’d like to see more single-player games from our first-party, just because that over time we’ve kind of grown organically to be more multiplayer-driven as an organization.

Now idiots can shut the fuck up about “omg GaaS GaaS GaaaaaaS”

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Great interview, he confirmed a lot of cool things. I’m glad he cleared up the Zenimax/exclusives thing, it sounds like he was getting tired of those questions. Now we officially know he simply can’t say anything until the acquisition is done. I expect something around E3 2021 (Starfield with a launch date/window, exclusive to Xbox/PC? Wolfenstein 3?).

He also talked about “family friendly” games. I immediately thought of Banjo 3 and Viva Pinata. Rare could oversee these games, I could imagine Playful or Toys for Bob working on a new Banjo. With the budget and some help from Rare I think they could pull it off. Maybe TFB could work on a Banjo 1-2 remastered collection first to get a feel for the IP, then Banjo 3?

Finally, happy to see they don’t want to turn everything in to a GaaS.

Can we see what Compulsion and The Initiative are doing now?? :slight_smile:

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And for Viva Piñata, get Frontier. They already worked with Microsoft on Zoo Tycoon, and recently did Planet Zoo.

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A high quality Banjo, Viva Pinata and Kameo would do wonders for their E rated catalogue.

Viva Pinata should be Xbox’s Animal Crossing.

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Oh yeah, they’ve done a lot of stuff for PC and Xbox, it could work. They seem to have a couple ongoing projects already though.

“I think the diversity of online multiplayer & single-player, we have to support diversity. If anything I’d like to see more single-player games from our first-party, just because that over time we’ve kind of grown organically to be more multiplayer-driven as an organization.”

“In terms of what I want long term. I want those amazing studious to create the best games they ever created. That’s when Todd and I sat down and had a discussion. Todd and I have known each other for years and years, and we talked about this partnership. We looked each other in the eyes and we said, ‘okay, what are we really gonna do here?’ And he said, ‘I wanna build the best games that I’ve ever built and I want the support of Microsoft to be able to do that.’ And I say the same thing about the studios at Arkane and id Software and Machine Games. I want them to do the most amazing work and support them in doing that.”

With now the amazingly talented teams of Bethesda on board next gen can be something truly special for the Xbox as a platform. I am really happy to see Spencer saying the things that I like to hear…great things are coming our way guys. :wink:

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Great interview. I suspected Game Pass was coming to Smart-TVs but I’d forgotten about Amazon Fire TV Sticks, it will be interesting to see if Amazon will allow Game Pass on there, along with Luna.

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If they allow Netflix they will also allow xclould. This is not apple.

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basically this was an interview which confirmed three specific things I’d wanted confirmed

  1. Singleplayer focus not going away (in fact ironically more desirable to Phil because it’s growth potential for a company that’s generally become known for multiplayer? yessirrr)

  2. How steam is talked about as something PC players take for granted that games are coming to, this I think underpins that there won’t be any games exclusive to gamepass. However, I would love for the Forza series to make it over to Steam too. Probably licensing problems, but hope they find ways to get past it in the same way they got past the FM7 hurdles recently.

  3. Retail as an option existing in the future too, a major W for game ownership as I would have fucking hated if games stopped selling at full price once and the only way to access them would be through subscriptions, that would have been the worst possible thing, but glad to see Phil reiterate it as an important choice of accessing their ecosystem.

All in all, amazing interview and answered so many questions, some small and some rather extremely overarching like the above ones, so this was a good xbox monday!

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Yep, Frontier and Xbox go way back too , so they fit in with the previous purchase precedence. Frontier is one of my favorite devs and I really think they’d be perfect for Xbox.

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I want Frontier but they’re public and Tencent owns a stake.

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Yet.