The lack of single player story driven games on the Xbox One has been a sticking point for a lot of Microsoft’s critics, one that becomes even more amplified in light of the bevy of excellent titles of the kind that the likes of Sony and Nintendo continue to deliver consistently. However, according to Xbox Games’ marketing general manager Aaron Greenberg, that is something that Microsoft will be focusing on going forward.
While speaking with DualShockers, Greenberg mentioned that as a result of the acquisition of five new studios as first party developers, including the likes of Ninja Theory and We Happy Few developers Compulsion Games, Microsoft is going to try and make a wide variety of games that appeases fans of single player titles, multiplayer titles, and everything in between.
“We love single player games,” Greenberg said. “It’s something that we absolutely believe in, and you’re right. I think the thing about these studios that makes them unique is really first and foremost, they are incredibly talented developers that make really high quality games.”
“If you think about Compulsion, or Ninja Theory, or Undead,” he continued, “they’re make games that are uniquely different from what we’re doing today in our first-party studios. These games are different than Forza, or Halo, or Gears, or some of the franchises that people know us for. That’s gonna add to the diversity of the content.”
“We want people to make great games, so we want to give them the independence and the focus to go do that,” said Greenberg. “Ultimately we know that all the data shows that gamers like to play a wide variety of games. People want to play co-op games, they want to play multiplayer games, and they want to play single player games, and we wanna make sure that we have the best of those games coming out of those internal studios as well.”
This acquisition of five new first party studios was perhaps one of the biggest and most encouraging announcements Microsoft made at E3 2018, not because it netted fans any immediate gratification, but because it gives everyone assurances about Xbox’s and Microsoft’s future in video games. Which, incidentally, is an area where Microsoft have been investing heavily recently, and will apparently continue to do so.
When asked about the reasons for Microsoft’s renewed focus on investing in the industry, Greenberg said, “I think first is that gaming is playing a bigger role in the company. The fact that Phil Spencer is supporting directly the CEO, and just the importance of gaming as a strategic investment for the company, it’s never been more focused than what we’re seeing today.”
“There is a lot of exciting opportunities for us to leverage all the power and resources that we have at Microsoft,” he went on. “We talked about things like Microsft AI, or the whole Azure cloud theam and what they’re able to do there, as we think about the future of game streaming and cloud is really exciting. But for me what I really love about this team is that we’re really customer-obsessed. We put our fans first in everything we do. That’s why you see investments in things like Game Pass.”
Like almost everything else top Microsoft executives have said about their direction in the future and their approach towards Xbox, that sounds very encouraging. It also rings true on many levels- for example, Game Pass is an absolutely incredible service, one that is sure to grow and expand in the coming years, and deservedly so. Greenberg also talked about how the next generation of Xbox will see Microsoft continuing to double down on such services, which is also obviously excellent news. Read more on that through here.
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