https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7O_mVgzlmw

Pretty great and refreshingly honest interview with the Xboss there, regarding many things Xbox and gaming altogether.

"People turn on their Xbox to go play games, and I think us having a strong first party Xbox means when I think about Xbox, I’m going to think about quality games. We have work to do there. We haven’t done our best work over the last few years with our first party output."

"xCloud is being built for the next decade as it won’t replace consoles or PCs any time soon."

Regarding GAAS:

"Blizzard just launched the 15th anniversary of WoW. These are games that have decade-plus [life] and there’s still interesting things for people to go do in those games. And I think our role as a game industry, if you want to go invest your time and your money in these great franchises, we should make them live as long as possible. Like we don’t have the end moment of a lot of these games, these are games that that will want to persist. So it’s why the focus on on the cloud infrastructure, which allows these games to move from device to device, or at least your state on the game, even if the game has a local runtime. But when I log in on Xbox Live on my Android phone, I’m on the same Xbox Live than I am on an Xbox console is really important. But that per device of ‘everything is only going to live on this device and the kind of beginning, middle and end of the content, the game experiences only live on that one device’. It’s just not where the biggest games in the world are today."

Nice article regarding the interview: https://wccftech.com/spencer-xbox-has-to-mean-quality-games-weve-got-work-to-do-there

As much as it feels like this is something Phil has been saying for a few years, it certainly feels different now that we can actually see the huge expansion of studios and some of the games those acquisitions will bring. There's also interesting stuff about Microsoft's view of the industry in there, whether you're a fan of them or not, it's certainly a unique approach to gaming and something much better for the consumer than your typical closed console environment.

People forget that xbox basically gave up this gen, 2 years into it.
They cut funding, cancelled games, cut games & cut back costs of games.

Them going out to get new studios isnt for this gen.
Its for the next one, and something that ll first start showing its pay off, in year 2023-2024 and onwards.


"As much as it feels like this is something Phil has been saying for a few years, it certainly feels different now that we can actually see the huge expansion of studios "

Basically saying wait for mid - next gen...

You have to have alot of trust in xbox, at this point to just blindly accept what their saying.
The studio's are there, time see if they will do all the good things gamers expect of them.

Also remember this guy is the same guy that said Voodoo Vince was his favorite game ever.
Then what happend? He cut funding for it, so they couldnt even do a proper remaster/remake.
Instead it relaunched with original assets.

Do you guys think, even after saying that, he'll green light a Voodoo Vince 2?
His talk is cheap.

What happens if it doesn't?

I feel like we hear a statement from MS every year about how they've been shit in the past years but going to do better next year.

Your definition of "giving up" on a gen is bizarre. They completely revamped the Xbox One, launched three different new versions of the Xbox One including the most powerful console ever, have expanded XBLG, offered BC with original Xbox titles and 360, introduced GamePass, Play Anywhere, released the elite and adaptive controllers, and released many games. They didn't give up, if anything they've been working extremely hard to wipe away the stain Mattrick and the old leadership left.

Every console company has cut funds to games and canceled games. We don't have the slightest idea as to what those numbers are, so it's pointless to speculate. And idk what supposedly cutting funds to a remake of an old game has to do with the future, could have been any number of reasons funds were cut to it, if they were.

He green lit Battletoads, I don't see why he wouldn't a VV2, if the game warrants it.

And no one is blindly accepting anything, they've earned the trust with their work on Xbone and the studios acquired. We'll begin to see results before 2023/24 lol. inXile did a recent interview talking about how MS backing is already paying off for Wasteland 3 and that game isn't even far off.

Nothing but empty words as long as they don't put their money where their mouths are and put out something substantial.

They do put out some quality games. Forza, especially Horizon are quality titles. Halo is quality. Gears is quality. The problem is it's just this core. When they try and branch out with games like Crackdown 3 or State of Decay 2 they're mediocre at best. They need new single player focused series, the sales of games like Horizon, God of War and Spider-Man show that there's a huge market for single player games.

Outside of their heavily established franchises they have issues, even spin-offs fail (Halo Wars 2).

Sad but true. Halo Wars 2 was actually a ton of fun... But sadly the multiplayer population imploded a few days after release in Oceania and I haven't been able to have a match since.

Hopefully with Microsoft opening up their wallets and buying up a ton of studios we see them put their best foot forward next gen.. But I still hold some reservation.

I've seen you mention this before about Halo Wars 2 but are you sure it's region locked? I could still find matches pretty quickly couple of months ago and some were with people from US. 

Halo Wars 2 is indeed a quality game and fun RTS to play with a controller. Sales were disappointing unfortunately.

Phil is always talk. Even the acquisition of the new studios isn't to improve their HW sales/experience, it's to create more content for GamerPass and/or xCloud. And MS has said as much. The problem is, with how they have handled game releases of late, I feel they may be going with the quantity over quality approach. Only really focusing quality on their 3 main series.

Hell, a few of those studios' first releases under MS will still be on the PS4, possibly PS5, because of prior agreements. We won't see anything really exclusive from them for Xbox services for another year or two, possibly more.

Playground Games are developing a new RPG (Fable?) and I'd expect them to deliver quality. Then there's The Initiative or whatever it's called which should be making AAA games. 

I've no problem them buying studios to make content for Game Pass though. It's a great service.