But is there a ceiling to Game Pass, to growing that market?
We’ve recently seen Sony stop sharing PlayStation Plus numbers, which was interesting.
How do you keep Game Pass growing?
Phil Spencer:Our focus is on: how do we find more players?
Our tactics to get there [are that] we think our games should be available in more places.
All of our games are available on console, plus or minus maybe a couple of PC exclusives.
But those games we ship on PC, we also put on cloud.
So any web-enabled platform can play those games.
It is about making games available to as many people as possible.
One other barrier to people is the price point of retail games.
Certain people love spending $70 pricing on video games.
That’s part of it.
And that’s our approach - to build around the player first.
And that approach isn’t necessarily going to tear down other company’s platform success, or console success.
And that’s okay with us.
And we don’t look at us growing meaning somebody else has to get smaller.
And I think about almost every decision we make, does this make the industry grow?
Will this help the industry grow?
And that’s a pretty big filter on the things that we do.
Which I guess takes us back to Microsoft’s big emphasis on mobile.
They have an abundance of free-to-play games and there’s so many mobile games that launch.
It’s really the only one of the three that’s growing.
Mobile has been really all of the growth in this industry over the last 10 years.
But other companies are going to make their decisions on places where people can go play.
We can put our games on PC and console.
How do you put something like Starfield or Spider-Man on mobile?
Spencer:You stream it.
We could do it.
Is it where I’m going to play every time?
Xbox’s hardware focus feels pretty defined.
Feel free to disagree!
Spencer:I don’t know a lot about - what is it, Project Q?
Spencer:Like, I haven’t been briefed on it.
I know a lot about the Steam Deck.
They’ve sold millions of Steam Decks and they get used.
I know for me, my ROG Ally is my Xbox on the go.
Because almost every game supports cross-save so I can sit down and I can pick up my progress there.
My friends are there if I’m playing a multiplayer game.
And then when I go home, and I pick up from my console, it’s very continuous.
So I’m picking a little bit on the niche experience.
I think if it was something totally dedicated to being extension of the console.
But these are standalone platforms unto themselves.
I think you have answered my question!
And I’ll pick the ROG Ally because it’s one I’m playing on right now a lot.
What is it about it, for the player experience?
Forget about what colour the plastic is or whose name is on the back of it.
I think the differences are smaller and smaller for us.
Because Game Pass is there so my library of games are there.
The controls are basically the same ABXY, twin stick, triggers.
My saved games are there.
It’s an amazing Xbox experience, even though we didn’t build the rig.
And I think that’s totally fine.
There are always questions around whether Microsoft may eventually run out of interest in gaming.
Are you able to commit to doing a Gen 10 console at this point?
Spencer:We are continuing to innovate in hardware.
And I wonder if our strict definition of generations is going to hold.
So it’ll be interesting.
This isn’t like a foreshadowing of a plan.
But it’ll be interesting to see if we think about generations in the same way.
Take PC as an example.
We don’t really talk about the latest AMD and Nvidia GPUs as part of a generation.
We see it as more continuous than step function.
And there’s some advantages to step function, I get it.
So I’m curious how that plays out.
I think what people want from us… We have a hardware team.
We love our hardware team.
We’re investing in hardware.
We’re investing in future hardware.
So you’re gonna continue to see hardware coming from Xbox.
We think that’s important, and we love the console experience.
We’re not running away from that.
… it feels like Gen 10.
I think that’s important.
And then later in the generation, we look at what’s happening on a PC.
And we say, ‘how come our consoles can’t do that?’
And then that’s the spec you’re gonna have for five, six, seven years.
I think what we get ourselves into is this world of like, ‘Should we do a mid-gen refresh?
Because we think every game should be 4K 60fps.
And we’re not seeing that right now so, clearly, we need to mid-gen refresh.’
And there’s a bunch of things.
I mean, we are the Windows company.
I actually love that for console gaming.
‘It needs to be Teams.’
Spencer:[Laughs] Exactly, exactly.
All of that stuff is.
So when I think about console, I love those notions.
Now, there’s things about console, I really like.
I think all of those are incredibly valuable.
And I don’t want to lose those things.
And maybe there’s another model for us.
To just make it a cheaper thing to manufacture?
Spencer:The prices aren’t coming down.
For us, thinking about where our hardware is going and reaching more customers, price point is important.
That won’t happen.
It’s why you see console pricing relatively flat.
Forza Motorsport was never going to have splitscreen.
That’s just a decision the team made based on usage.
I think that’s more that the community is talking about it.
And I think we’re gonna get there with Larian.
So I’m not overly worried about that, but we’ve learned some stuff through it.
I think it’s important.
So we’re committed.
Do you have to be careful around communicating those changes because game preservation is such an important issue?
Spencer:Game preservation is critical to us at Team Xbox.
On the 360, I love our back compat and the work that we’ve done.
The work on the 360 storefront was really just about the hardware and the lifespan of the hardware.
We know how many people are playing 360 games on the 360.
It’s a pretty small community.
The community of buyers is very, very small.
I think that’s pretty cool.
How many of those are on PC?
I will say for us that preservation that’s linked to only one piece of hardware is a challenge.
But that’s why we gave people with this decision a year.
