After a Sony executive recently made a bold statement about PlayStation's dominance in Europe, Xbox head honcho, Phil Spencer, has acknowledged the struggle Microsoft's console has had in the region in a new interview.
After an excellent showing at E3 and with Gamescom just around the corner, Xbox seems to be in a pretty good place right now. Exciting features and some quality games are headed the way of Xbox One owners worldwide. But, there's still some work to be done in Europe.
Spencer was speaking in an interview with industry magazine, EDGE:
"We need to do better in Europe. "When I look globally, mainland Europe is definitely an area we want to focus on.""I'm excited about going to Gamescom at the beginning of August, having another press show where we're able to show games that we didn't show [at E3]. So you're going to see brand new games, as well as obviously some repeats, but you're going to see Scalebound, Crackdown, Quantum Break from my friends at Remedy. From a product standpoint, I like where we are. I think the team's doing a great job with the games and building a platform for gamers."
If Microsoft is gunning to capture the hearts of console gamers in Europe, Gamescom is as good a place as any to start. Sony isn't holding a press conference there, deciding to shun the world's largest games show (one that attracts over 300,000 visitors a year) to instead host a briefing in October at Paris Games Week. That leaves the floor wide open for Spencer and the Xbox team to really blow the doors off it.
Not all of Europe conforms to the Sony dominance. The UK, for example, still sees Sony as the market leader but there's still plenty of love for the Xbox One. Microsoft has a big marketing presence for all its products, for one. The holiday season will be key, as ever, but with big titles like Rise of the Tomb Raider and Forza 6 exclusively available on Xbox One as well as huge cross-platform efforts like Fallout 4, there's an argument to be made that the best games really will be available on Xbox. This past holiday season saw good results in the U.S. and UK in particular where significant price cuts were made to the console.
The interview also talks a little about the unified store, Xbox on Windows 10 PCs, thoughts on HoloLens and more. You can check out some of it at the link below. Gamescom is shaping up to be a pretty special event for Xbox fans and we'll be live from Cologne on August 4 to bring you absolutely everything you need to know.
Source: EDGE via VideoGamer
