Xbox Does Not Mandate Every Game to be a Live Service - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 13 July 2021 / 1,215 Views
While several games from Xbox Game Studios are live services with new content being added over a period of months and years, there is no mandate that every first-party game from Xbox has to be live service.
Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty in an interview with The Guardian said that the success of Minecraft and Sea of Thieves doesn't mean every game it is publishing has to be constantly evolving.
"We don’t have any direction or mandate that says every game has to be an ongoing, sustained game," said Booty.
"Take [surrealist platforming game] Psychonauts: there might be a Psychonauts 3, but I’m not going to tell [designer] Tim Schafer to go make it. Knowing the history of games that he makes, I don’t think he’s going to be making a game that has seasons and goes on for five years."
Booty added that standalone story-driven games are important to Xbox and they won't be compromised by turning them into a live service.
"Sea of Thieves has longevity and we’re going to have Halo multiplayer start to be based around seasons, but Compulsion Games, our studio in Montreal, weren’t told to go build something that’s going to have seasons or six pieces of DLC or something," he added.
"Tell Me Why was an important story for us to get out there, but there is no mandate that they’ve got to go figure out how to do seasons for that game."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
