Summary
- Xbox’s Phil Spencer reaffirms his commitment to single-player games, citing the most recent Developer Direct as an example.
- He says that Game Pass is a good fit for smaller single-player games, like South of Midnight.
- This comes after both Xbox and PlayStation have suffered live sevrie setbacks, with Redfall and Concord respectively.
Xbox boss Phil Spencer has reaffirmed the company’s commitment to single-player games, both big and small. This comes after both of the big giants have suffered setbacks with their live service endeavours, with Sony in particular now reassessing its entire strategy after Concord.
This comes from an interview with XboxEra, which took place right after Xbox’s Developer Direct late last month. Here, Spencer says he was pleased to see that all of the games showcased were single-player, and sees Game Pass as a good home for titles like South of Midnight, which are a bit smaller compared to other first-party releases.
Phil Spencer Discusses Smaller Games On Game Pass
He argues that not every idea for a game fits live service, and shouldn’t be made to
“I love the event from our Dev Direct,” says Spencer. “All of those were single-player games. They were all games that have a beginning, middle and end.”
He explains that this was very much a conscious decision. “It was because I didn’t want to see every game turn into some big service-based game because they felt like that’s where the business model is,” he continues. “Not every story is told in that way. Not every game kind of supports that or creative idea supports that business model.
“I love the fact that we can go and when I look at what Double Fine’s working on next, when I think about a team like Compulsion. Right, these aren’t the biggest teams and they don’t want to be massive 1,000-person teams and we want them to be able to do great work. And so I want to create a platform that can support that.”
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One of Xbox’s big misses of this generation was a live service, Redfall. This was so short-lived that its final update came just a year after launch, adding an offline mode. Xbox closed the developer, Arkane Austin, in a round of layoffs around this time.
PlayStation had its own high-profile failure with Concord last year. What was supposed to be one of the next big hero shooters ended up being taken offline just two weeks later. The developer of this, Firewalk, was also shut down in response. Since then, Sony has cancelled at least two live services that its studios were working on, reportedly in response to Concord’s failure.
