Xbox’s Spencer On Sales & Ditching Exclusivity

The writing has been on the wall for a while now, but Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has seemingly confirmed it – Xbox is pretty much done with exclusivity in the console wars and trying to lure PlayStation and Nintendo users over to their console.

In a new interview with the XboxEra podcast, Spencer has spoken more about the company’s decision to release more Xbox games on PS5 and indicates that trying to get PS5 owners to move to Xbox was no longer a viable strategy.

Instead, the plan is to sell the games directly to them via their respective stores. Various Xbox exclusives began selling on PS5 and Switch stores in recent years, with more on the way. Multiple Xbox titles coming this year will be hitting all consoles day-and-date too, such as “Doom: The Dark Ages”.

Spencer explains to the outlet that it’s all part of Xbox’s strategy to be everywhere and not necessarily locked down to a piece of hardware:

I would love to make all of the money for all the games that we ship right now. 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.

I’m not trying to move them 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.”

Spencer adds that he feels transparency is important, which is why the recent Developer Direct didn’t hide the fact that titles being advertised were also shipping on other consoles:

“I just want to be transparent with people. If we’re shipping on Nintendo Switch we’re going to put that, if we’re shipping on PlayStation, if we’re on Steam, people should know the storefronts where they can get our games.”

Spencer says Xbox is still the best platform to play their games on as it’s all about the community and the games themselves:

“I want people to be able to experience our Xbox community, and our games and everything we have to offer on every screen we can, and obviously not every screen is equal. There’s certain things we can’t do on the other closed platforms that we can do on open platforms, clouds, but games should be the thing that we’re focused on. This strategy that we have allows us to do big games, while also supporting our native platform from the hardware to the platform and services that we have, and that’s going to be our approach. And I know it’s not what everybody else is doing, but I just believe games should be the thing that’s at the forefront.”

One key difference is that on other platforms you’re paying full price for the games, vs. Xbox where they come as part of a GamePass subscription. Spencer adds that Xbox is seeing major growth in the brand outside of the console with PC and Cloud gaming, especially in Asia. He says they are: “finding more users year over year than in any other place… us embracing Windows and embracing Cloud has allowed us to grow.”

The full half-hour interview with Spencer is up at the XboxEra podcast.

The comments come as this past week saw the PS5 passing the 75 million sales mark, the most recent quarter (Oct-Dec 2024) selling 9.5 million units – the console’s best selling quarter to date. The PS5 has seen 37% growth compared to the same period last year.

Compare that to Xbox which, according to numbers from a Take-Two earnings report (via IGN) indicates Xbox Series X/S sales are at around 29 million in total so far.

The post Xbox’s Spencer On Sales & Ditching Exclusivity appeared first on Dark Horizons.