Microsoft says it doesn’t need to sell the Xbox Series X for it to be successful

Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox has made one point very clear - Microsoft does not necessarily need to sell the Xbox Series X for it to be successful. Speaking to GameReactor, Spencer said that Microsoft os more focused on attracting new customers to the Xbox ecosystem and that could be via PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox or Android.

Spencer said that their “high-level” goal inside of the team and how they measure themselves is according to how many people are playing on Xbox.

Amd when Spencer says ‘play on’ Xbox, it does not mean an xbox console. It means someone who is logging in from pretty much any other compatible device and playing a part in the ecosystem, “first-party or third-party”.

Microsoft’s approach is in sharp contrast to how Sony thinks. Sony is “laser-focused” on creating “unique and exclusive experiences that only exist on PlayStation hardware like PS5”, TechRadar writes. However, Sony has started to port older PS4 exclusives to PC like Horizon: Zero Dawn, while Death Stranding also got a PC release.

Microsoft’s vision may seem like “an early declaration of defeat” but the company is banking on Xbox Game Pass for a “regular and recurring revenue stream”.

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Over 15 million people already subscribe to the Xbox Game Pass, which is best described as a “Netflix for games”, and Spencer wants to “continue to invest in new studios to help bolster Xbox Game Pass”. For starters, Microsoft recently spent $7.5 billion to acquire ZeniMax, the holding company of Bethesda.

“Teams that can build new franchises, tell new stories, those are always sought after. That's why I'm excited about projects like Starfield and the next Compulsion game because I like teams that think about new creations,” Spencer told GameReactor.

“And frankly, as Game Pass continues to grow, we need to continue to feed that subscription. So, with the growth that we are seeing, I expect we will constantly be in this mode of bringing more creators into the fold,” he added.

In the interview, Spencer also hinted that the Xbox Game Pass could expand to more platforms in the future, particularly Chromebooks and FireTV via cloud streaming, and also added that iOS users will eventually be able to play Xbox games on their devices.

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Spencer said that for the company, it is all about priority and reaching more players. For that, they first took the PC route after Xbox because there are so many players across the world who do not own an Xbox.

“We went to mobile next because there's a billion Android phones on the planet. It's significantly larger than any console player base,” Spencer explained.

"We still have iOS to go after, we will come to iOS at some point. We're still working on some of our technology on PC for larger screens in terms of streaming, and getting to iOS, and I think once we get through that, we look at what the other options are,” he added.

“There's smart TV's out there, there's Chromebooks out there, there's FireTV out there, there's a lot of discussions we would have, we would prioritize it based on where we would find the most new players, that we could naturally bring content to,” Spencer said.