Feeling Better About Xbox? (Premium)

Today, Phil Spencer and his senior executive team came clean on Microsoft’s strategy for Xbox in the wake of its Activision Blizzard acquisition. It was nothing but good news. But if I know the Xbox community like I think I do, we’re going to see some grumbling, if not some all-out Chicken Little doomsday prophesizing. So let’s relax, and step through this, in what I assume would have been the normal order of things.

Up front, I was delighted to hear Phil Spencer confirm my theory—stated here and in at least two podcasts—that this event was primarily about Microsoft’s plans for Activision Blizzard and that they reordered the announcements only because of recent rumors and all the resulting handwringing. Damn straight: Microsoft spent $68 billion on Activision Blizzard, and this is a big deal. And a gamer, an Xbox fan, and an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscriber, I want to know when I’m getting all that content.

Now we know: “All of our games are in Game Pass” is the mantra and, on that note, Activision Blizzard titles are of course coming to me at the other 34 million Game Pass members (new number!) starting with Diablo IV on March 24. Which, granted, is problematic on two levels—why so late and why only that one game?—but at least we know. One assumes—because one has to—that Microsoft will spend the rest of 2024 slowly leaching Activision Blizzard content out in Game Pass (and Cloud Gaming).

Regarding Game Pass, Microsoft also reiterated that all first-party Xbox games will appear on Game Pass on day one, and that answers another burning question: Future Activision Blizzard titles, like the next Call of Duty, will indeed be made available on the service on day one. That’s huge.

But Microsoft also dropped this interesting bomb: Game Pass will only be available on Xbox, which in Microsoft’s somewhat contorted terminology, could mean different things. Today, it’s the Xbox consoles and PCs. But the company noted that it will continue looking at how it can further its vision of bringing more games to more players, and it’s difficult to believe there aren’t plans for an Xbox Game Pass Mobile or whatever. That will then be considered “Xbox.” That said, no one was explicit about that.

Microsoft also sees cross-play—the ability to play with gamers on other platforms—and cross-save—the ability to continue single-player experiences in a game across multiple devices—as a key strength of Xbox as a platform. And that, too, hints at a future in which the definition of the term “Xbox” expands. For example, first-party Xbox titles on PlayStation and/or Nintendo will surely allow gamers to compete with those on Xbox and PC. Because those titles fall under that Xbox umbrella.

Before getting to the exclusivity nonsense that had so much of the community in tears, I think it’s important to reiterate that everything Microsoft announced today is in keeping with its long-time strategy for Xbox, to meet gamers where they are. I made my case for this logic last week, but here’s how Microsoft addressed it today.

“It is this view that people are going to play Xbox in multiple places, whether it’s play[ing] the games you want with the people you want anywhere you want, whether it’s content, community, and cloud, whether it’s when everybody plays, we all win, we’ve had different taglines, different strateg[ic]words we’ve used, but always with this view that Xbox is a platform for creators who want to reach the most players,” Phil Spencer said. “This has been a strategy that we’ve been on for, I’d say, a decade.”

Exactly. Thank you.

“It’s not about one device. It’s not about games in service of [one] device, but rather [that] the devices [he emphasized the plural] that people want to play on should be in service of making the games as big and popular as they possibly could be.”

Again, exactly. And this is what it means to meet gamers where they are. The reality is that gamers are already multi-device, and that in meeting the needs of multi-device gaming, Microsoft is, in fact, just doing what its customers should expect. Microsoft has already shipped some games on multiple platforms, of course, and with the addition of Activision Blizzard and Zenimax, Xbox is—ironically?—one of the largest game publishers on PlayStation, a platform the Chicken Littles would describe as an enemy.

Well, they’re not the enemy and it’s not just PlayStation. Thanks to the incredible expansion of publishers at Xbox, this business is now one of the biggest publishers on PC, mobile, and Nintendo too. Multi-platform is not something Xbox backs away from. It’s invested many billions to get to this place. As Spencer said, this is about putting Xbox in the best possible position for the next 20 years.

But it gets even better.

Spencer then addresses that thing that I think some in the Xbox community just can’t wrap their head around. That, as fans of Xbox, they should rally around any strategy that makes this thing they love more successful. I wrote this in the article I’ve already referenced twice, but here’s how Phil said it.

“A healthy creator community on Xbox, a healthy creator community in gaming all up, is the thing that all of us as game players should be voting for, because that’s the thing that will lead to the best long-term success and growth in this industry.”

Still worried about Xbox? Then please, dear God, please, pay attention to this bit: Xbox is committed to first-party hardware specifically because it’s such an important component of making the overall Xbox platform successful.

“The absolute best experience that somebody has on Xbox is [using] hardware that our team builds, and that people play on,” Spencer said. “That’s not going to be everybody, we fully accepted that we’re going to have Xbox players on all kinds of devices.”

And yes, they did talk about future Xbox consoles, devices that will offer a “seminal, flagship Xbox experience.” Microsoft will share more “this holiday” season, we were told, but the firm isn’t just invested in the mid-stream upgrades to the Xbox Series X|S that leaked last summer, it’s also invested in “the next-generation roadmap,” which will “deliver the largest technical leap you have ever seen in a hardware generation.”

Folks. If that doesn’t get you excited, call a doctor.

The discussion about future hardware generations transitioned into an interesting topic that I think sits at the heart of the Xbox value proposition, a key differentiator between this platform and other consoles: The portability of gamers’ game libraries, not just from console generation to console generation thanks to Xbox Backward Compatibility, but also to other platforms, including Cloud Gaming.

Here, Spencer noted that this capability, this game library preservation, was inspired by Windows, and how it maintained software compatibility over decades as a key component of its ongoing value to customers. Seeing that older games often run just fine on newer versions of Windows decades later, Xbox tried to bring some of that to the consoles. It’s harder on consoles for all the obvious reasons—different hardware platforms, for starters—but the ability to bring forward not just games, but also saves is a, well, game changer. Xbox will respect this key tenet of the platform in future console generations as well, he promised.

The show ended with a discussion of what Xbox means today, and it was, of course, just a summary of all the points that Microsoft made earlier, not just today, but over the past several years, about the uniqueness that makes Xbox special. Xbox is all about “player-first,” with features like cross-play and cross-save, cross-progression, backward compatibility, play anywhere, and so on. When you bet on Xbox, you’re not betting on a piece of hardware. You’re betting on you, and your ability to play your games where you want and with whom you want.

It’s beautiful, frankly. And the ideal place to wrap up. So I hope that Xbox fans—all Xbox fans—came away from this energized. That this event filled you with hope for the future and perhaps wiped away any dread you were feeling before. And …

Oh, right. The stupid thing some disgruntled fans were so worried about.

Microsoft announced that it will bring four first-party games, just four games, to “the other consoles.” This is not a change to the Xbox exclusivity strategy, but is rather about the long-term health of the platform and the realization that these four games coming to PlayStation and/or Nintendo will help grow some of the most important Xbox franchises.

So what are those four games? Oddly, they didn’t say. Instead, the teams behind those titles will make their own announcements soon, but Spencer oddly confirmed—because of recent rumors, now known to be incorrect—that neither of those titles is Starfield or Indiana Jones. Which actually makes sense: Neither is a major first-party franchise.

I would have assumed that these four games might have included major titles like Halo, Gears of War, Flight Simulator, and Forza. But Spencer provided numerous hints that these are smaller games. He said they were over a year old each and on Xbox and PC, and had reached their full potential there. They are service-based games with communities, and two are smaller games that were never really meant to be platform exclusives. Interesting. Sea of Thieves comes to mind. As Dusk Falls? Hm.

Well. That’s something to discuss now, isn’t. What are your guesses?