Game Pass/Xbox
Last month Microsoft held an important broadcast called "
Updates on Microsoft's Business Future"
.
On paper it sounded formal and not particularly exciting, and mostly it felt like a broadcast that could have ended up in an email.
But if you listen there to what
Phil Spencer
, the CEO of Xbox, says, you can see that Microsoft is moving forward slowly and confidently with its plans to expand the Xbox platform to a variety of different services accessible to the consumer, and not to offer its audience of players only hardware. That is, a console. This program began to grow in strength over the past few years, and we saw it happen at the beginning of the generation through support for old Xbox games on new consoles (Backwards Compatibility) and even its Game Pass service, which is gaining momentum and impressive growth specifically among PC players.
The broadcast opens with A very controversial announcement in the gaming industry: Spencer indicated that four Xbox exclusive games will be coming to Sony and Nintendo's competing consoles, the PlayStation and the Nintendo Switch in the near future. War on the PlayStation may disappoint. We have since officially revealed that these are
Hi-Fi Rush, Sea of Thieves, Pentiment and Grounded games.
We have yet to encounter a situation where Sony or Nintendo would dare to release their exclusive games to its direct competitor console.
Now it's true that Sony started releasing games for the PC, but the PC was never the direct competitor.
Is this a step that opened Pandora's box that will bring us the end of exclusivity?
No.
But considering that two of these games are Live Service with a cohesive community (Grounded and Sea of Thieves), this will allow Microsoft to continue to invest in them in the future even for the new audience of players who will join in the near future through the competing consoles.
And as for Hi-Fi Rush or Pentiment, Spencer pointed out that these are not titles that are meant to be exclusively for Xbox, and after a one-year cooling period they can reach the competing platforms to win over a new audience of players.
We have already experienced quite a few examples of games that were exclusive for only one year, but from developers that were not exclusive.
Bethesda's Ghostwire (before it was acquired by Microsoft), which in its first year was exclusively available for PlayStation, and then also came to Xbox and Game Pass, or Bloober's game The Medium, which was exclusive to Xbox for a year and found itself at the end of Talk to the competing console.
This step is not intended to cancel the exclusivity of Xbox.
It is intended to position her as a distributor, in addition to a hardware and games developer.
Spencer understands that the industry is advancing by leaps and bounds towards the day when the consoles, that is, the "box" itself that gamers purchase every generation, will become irrelevant once technologies like cloud streaming gain momentum and become an industry standard.
It is not too far-fetched to think that this day will come in, let's say, a decade.
Spencer has already guided Xbox teams to think about a future where "every screen is a potential Xbox."
That is, players will be able to play Game Pass through smart TVs, mobile and Microsoft's cloud technology, the xCloud.
This is already happening today, but Microsoft understands that this is a phenomenon that is destined to remain and become a permanent norm, and it continues to invest its money and resources in the right places for the future.
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Hi-Fi Rush, Sea of Thieves, Pentiment and Grounded are on their way to rival consoles: PlayStation and Nintendo Switch/Official Site, Xbox
And Microsoft's plans don't end there.
Not many are aware of the fact that Microsoft acquired Activision-Blizzard-King also for the third part of the company,
King.
The same mobile company that is responsible for mega-ultra-popular games like
Candy Crush
.
Call of Duty or Diablo from the Activision-Blizzard side is very nice, but you can't make the comparison to the profits that casual games like Candy Crush generate.
Love or hate Mobile, they win in every parameter.
This will allow Microsoft to open its own mobile store in the near-distant future, one that will compete directly with Apple or Google.
And this mobile store will also make use of Microsoft's ecosystems, such as its cloud services.
Do you notice how everything starts to connect?
These moves are designed to build Microsoft's future for a post-console day, a day when a physical console will no longer be the standard, and Spencer is trying to reassure gamers that it will make Xbox a stronger brand in the future.
This of course does not mean that Xbox Series X\S will be the last physical Xbox consoles.
Spencer hinted that their next console will be a "significant leap forward", and rumors have recently been circulating on the web about a Steam Deck-style portable console or an Asus Rogue Ally made by Microsoft.
Spencer really didn't give up on Xbox, and he promised that their big games in the future will remain exclusive (like Indiana Jones, which was also announced this month, and is developed by Bethesda) and will continue to come to the Game Pass service on launch day.
And yes, that includes the PC.
The future probably doesn't include a physical console, but the Xbox Series X/S won't be Microsoft's last consoles / official website, Microsoft
Sony and Nintendo also understand that the term "console war" is becoming irrelevant day by day, and someday the physical box will become irrelevant.
In recent years they have also begun to squint at the realms of mobile and the many casual players.
Sony has already announced the development of mobile games that will be based on their major brands, and you are probably aware of games like Super Mario Run, or such an insignificant game "that no one has ever heard of" - Pokemon Go.
And they don't just flow into the mobile world - we can't ignore the movies and series that come to us based on the big brands: the Super Mario animated movie from Illumination is considered the biggest animated movie of 2023, the Halo TV series on the Paramount+ streaming service, or the TV series of "The Last Between us" on HBO are only a small part of the most prominent examples of Sony-Microsoft-Nintendo's attempt to expand their target audiences, and they are well aware of the power of their brands in the various media.
And through these different media they manage to increase their audience of players.
All parties understand that what was in the past is not what will be in the future.
The Internet and mobile have developed so much in recent years, and no one will be able to experience growth if they do not open their ecosystem to additional platforms.
No matter how high quality the games you develop will be, they must reach as many screens and players as possible.
Spencer pointed out that if the gaming industry wants to grow, it has two options: to continue with the status quo, where each console has X players who use its services, but they are limited to only one hardware - the console they purchased.
Or, the second situation, and Spencer really does not hide that this is where he aims to place Xbox - a situation where the consumer is no longer limited to one specific console, and can choose several ways to consume his services and his games.
Whether it is a console, a personal computer, a portable console, a mobile device, a tablet, or all together.
Accessibility is the name of the game.
Just like Spencer said in the same broadcast:
"When we all play, we all win."
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