As more and more Xbox games make their way to other platforms, Xbox head Phil Spencer once again makes it clear that he’s happy to let you play their games anywhere.
By this point, I don’t really think I need to explain to you that the future of Xbox is a multiplatform one. I don’t think that necessarily means the end of the brand as a console manufacturer just yet, particularly considering Microsoft does seem to be working on a handheld of some sort. But, speaking in an interview with the XboxEra podcast, Xbox head Phil Spencer was asked about some comments he made during an FTC hearing in 2023. At the time he claimed that any game made by an Xbox-owned studio that released on PlayStation, the 30% cut Sony made was then used to secure other third-party titles, preventing them from coming to Xbox.
Of course, Xbox has steadily been releasing its games on other platforms for almost a year now, most recently Forza Horizon 5 on PS5, so Spencer was asked about if he’s more focused on the 70% he gets from releasing games on PlayStation, as opposed to losing out on that 30%. “It’s maybe not what I was going to say on stand at the time but yeah, I would love to make all of the money for all the games that we ship right now,” Spencer explained. “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 are on PlayStation or Nintendo, whether it’s that they like the controller better, they just like the games that are there – 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.”
Spencer also quite plainly said that he’s not trying to move players “all over to Xbox anymore. We’re 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 Developer Direct, and I hope this will continue to show through the rest of the year.”
It’s a pretty frank discussion of where Xbox is at, and its strategy going forward, though again, we could kind of all tell that this is a business decision. Right now the big question is whether those rumours about flagship titles like Halo: The Master Chief Collection coming to the Switch 2 have any truth to them, but considering Microsoft’s no red line approach, anything’s possible.
fbq('init', '1749355691872662');
fbq('track', 'PageView'); window.facebookPixelsDone = true;
window.dispatchEvent(new Event('BrockmanFacebookPixelsEnabled')); }
window.addEventListener('BrockmanTargetingCookiesAllowed', appendFacebookPixels);