Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer believes that having Xbox Game Pass allows the Xbox first-party teams to craft smaller single-player games, and he doesn't want to see the industry completely taken over by live service games.
It comes from a recent interview in which Spencer spoke with XboxEra on a number of topics, including his thoughts on single-player games and whether or not having smaller releases is still an important part of the overall focus at Xbox.
"I said years ago, and I kind of got some tomatoes thrown at me about the impact that first party games have in our industry. And it was really this struggle that I saw for the business results, and there's obviously been huge single player games, there’s no doubt. But part of our reason for trying to get a subscription going was to allow us to also support games that have a beginning, middle and end."
Spencer adds that he thinks it's beneficial to have something like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (which he admits isn't a small game) launch for someone to play, only to have Avowed coming shortly after. The CEO also points to the recent Xbox Developer_Direct, noting that all of the games included in the mostly first-party presentation were single-player titles.
"I didn’t want to see every game turn into some big service based game because they felt like that’s where the business model has. It’s not easy to do that. Not every story is told in that way," Spencer says. "Not every game kind of supports that or creative idea supports that business model."
Phil Spencer praises small development teams
Spencer specifically points to Double Fine and Compulsion Games, developers of Psychonauts 2 and the upcoming South of Midnight, respectively, as teams that are more comfortable working on smaller games.
"These aren’t the biggest teams, and they don’t want to be massive 1,000-person teams, and we want them to be able to do great work. And so I want to create a platform that can support that," Spencer says.
"I think it’s an important part of our industry because not every story is going to be 100 hours long and not every medium is going to have some kind of mechanic that has a currency and everything. They just want to tell their story and move [on]. Some of my favourite games, going back to like Limbo and stuff, these are these are fantastic games that I want to see continue in our industry."
Best of both worlds?
Obviously, these comments come with a caveat, as Microsoft has several successful live-service franchises under its belt, such as Rare's Sea of Thieves, a game that was well-established long before Activision Blizzard King was added to the Xbox portfolio. Microsoft now commands Call of Duty, Candy Crush, and Diablo 4, games that added high amounts of recurring spending into its coffers.
Even so, Spencer's explanation makes sense, as a successful subscription service requires a mixture of content in order to keep players engaged. Anecdotally, I have multiple friends who planned to cancel their Xbox Game Pass subscriptions at one point or another in the last several months, only to end up keeping the service active because they kept on having a new game to play.
That's set to continue in the coming months, with South of Midnight scheduled for April and DOOM: The Dark Ages launching in May. Xbox also has Ninja Gaiden 4, and Fable penciled in for the second half of the year, and maybe there's another game or two that just hasn't been confirmed yet.
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