During the 1990s and early 2000s, instead of PlayStation, Nintendo and Xbox, the video games industry’s 3 console giants consisted of the aforementioned PlayStation and Nintendo – but also SEGA. Unfortunately, following the failure of the Dreamcast, the console maker would pivot to becoming a 3rd-party publisher. With Microsoft seemingly set to go a similar route, Xbox Head Phil Spencer has now directly addressed these comparisons.
In an interview conducted by XboxEra, Spencer was asked about Xbox’s current strategy of releasing an increasing number of its first-party titles onto competing platforms, and whether this will ultimately lead to a similar full 3rd-party shift like we saw with SEGA back in the 2000s.
In discussing this (and the 30% cut that Sony takes on all Microsoft games which do come to its platform), Spencer stated [as transcribed by ResetEra user ‘Super’]: “I would love to make all of the money for all of the games that we ship right, like obviously we make more on our own platform. It’s one of the reasons that investing in our own platform is important. But there are people, whether it’s their libraries on a PlayStation or Nintendo, whether it’s they like the controller better, they just like the games that are there.”
He continued, “And I don’t want to then look at that and say, well, there’s no way that we should be able to build a business there, find fans of our franchises there. I’m not trying to move them all over to Xbox anymore. People were all so invested in where our games are. Let’s just allow more people to play and yes, the 70% that we make on games on other platforms is helpful to us being able to build great portfolios like we showed at the Dev Direct and I hope this will continue to show through the rest of the year.”
Of course, regardless of whether the company was planning to leave the console hardware business or not, they would be unlikely to reveal such information until absolutely necessary.
Still, with Microsoft reportedly working on its next-gen console right now, it seems that Xbox as a hardware brand is here to stay – at least for the time being.
KitGuru says: What do you think of Phil’s response? Will Xbox eventually leave the console business? Let us know down below.
