Microsoft have pivoted away from focusing solely on hardware and have instead opted for a business strategy that instead puts more emphasis on building an ecosystem through subscription services, and at the centre of that strategy is Xbox Game Pass. With the service also available on non-Xbox platforms like PC and mobile, it’s clear that Microsoft want to branch out to make Game Pass truly platform agnostic – which is something that they have mentioned before. But don’t expect to see the service showing up on Sony or Nintendo consoles anytime soon.
Speaking in an interview with German website GameStar (which you can view below), Xbox boss Phil Spencer said that the other “competitive platforms” don’t seem to have much interest in having “a full Xbox experience on their hardware”, which, he says, is what Microsoft’s approach has been with bringing Game Pass to devices, encompassing things such as Xbox Live, Achievements, and Microsoft’s first party games as well (transcribed by TweakTown).
“The thing about other gaming console platforms is we’re not able to bring a full Xbox experience on those platforms,” Spencer said. “In places where we have – like mobile phones, like we’re doing now with xCloud coming to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, what we’ve done with PC in bringing our full Xbox experience there – because we know when somebody is playing one of our Xbox games, there is an expectation that ‘I’ve got my Xbox Live community, I have my achievements, Game Pass is an option for me, my first-party library is completely there.'”
“The other competitive platforms aren’t really that interested in having a full Xbox experience on their hardware,” he continued. “But for us, we want to be where gamers want to be and that’s the path that we’re on.”
Given Microsoft’s subscriptions-driven approach which is focused on building an ecosystem across devices rather than focusing on a single console, having Game Pass come to competing consoles is something that would actually make a ton of sense for them, not to mention the fact that it would be great for owners of those consoles as well. As Spencer said though, Microsoft’s competitors don’t seem to be interested in that, which is a bummer- to say the very least.