Xbox Boss Says First-Party Games Will Be Diverse, Won’t Copy PlayStation

At the GameLab Live conference last June, Xbox boss Phil Spencer – or as I like to call him, Xbox Uncle – spoke at length about how building a unique strategy made up of diverse offerings will separate Xbox from its main rival PlayStation.

In the past, the Xbox team has been criticized for the perception of having not done enough to compete with PlayStation and other platforms. But moving into the next generation, Spencer doesn’t believe that’s going to be an issue. With 15 teams under the Xbox Games Studios banner, they’re poised to deliver exclusive content for the Xbox ecosystem that includes consoles, PCs and services like the Xbox Game Pass and Project xCloud.

“First-party content is really important to where we’re going,” Spencer said. "It's important to our hardware platforms, it's important to things like Game Pass and our overall gaming strategy at Microsoft.” He said he feels "really good" about many of the company's upcoming games and how many more have not been announced yet.

Spencer did address a question that gets frequently asked, which is where the Playstation-exclusive equivalents for Xbox are. He said Microsoft is thinking differently, implicitly suggesting that making their own Uncharted or their own God of War is not the core of their development strategy. "We know it's something that our fans want."

"We are going to create our first-party around the things that we feel like we need to do in order to stand up for Xbox. Sometimes we get suggestions of, 'Where's your X game?' or, 'Where's your Y game?' when people look at the other hardware platforms. But I don't think our goal is to replicate what other people have done. It doesn't help the industry to […] do exactly the same thing with their platforms, services, or content."

Games like Gears Tactics are examples of first-party content developed to increase Xbox’s range of appeal, but can be sampled risk-free via Xbox Game Pass.

So while Microsoft won't try to directly copy the first-party strategies of Sony or Nintendo, Spencer feels confident that his teams are working on titles that will appeal to a broad range of players.

"I'm really proud of the diversity of content that our Xbox Games Studios teams are creating – genres, art styles, platforms, and gameplay," he said. "Single-player, multiplayer, cooperative work that's coming along … That's going to be a mainstay for us. It won't be about a certain kind of genre or a certain kind of story. The teams are really led by their own vision and what they want to build."

We’re given to understand from Spencer’s comments that while games like Halo and Gears remain flagships for the Xbox platform, the priority is to ensure that it is a home to diverse games to appeal to more than just the hardcore gamer who seeks intense, high-investment experiences or the casual enthusiast who checks in for big cultural events like the latest Naughty Dog or Rockstar game.

Which isn’t to say that Xbox has checked out of that domain entirely. Halo Infinite remains on the horizon and reports are that The Initiative – a Santa Monica studio made up of experienced creatives from Naughty Dog, Crystal Dynamics and Rockstar – is developing a big action adventure with online features.

All told, Xbox is spending its energy on creating new experiences rather than competing directly with the market leaders. Spencer stressed how its possible thanks to Microsoft higher-ups believing in his vision. “As we got in place the new leadership team a few years ago, we started building our strategy and articulating our strategy internally to the company, it was really encouraging to see the support that we were getting from the board and the senior leadership team at the company."

After a less than stellar Xbox Series X ‘gameplay’ reveal in May, Microsoft will hold its Xbox Series X games showcase on July 20.

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