It’s been many years that we’ve been hearing “The next is the last generation of consoles” statement from many analysts in the gaming space, but as technology actually begins to catch up with the idea, it’s probably becoming more and more real. E3 2018 even saw Electronic Arts introduce their own upcoming streaming service, and Microsoft too believes that a gaming future without a console will come around.
The Guardian managed to get an interview with Xbox head Phil Spencer, within which the subject of the future of Xbox was discussed. While the announcement that Microsoft would double their in house studios is important in the short term to show commitment, it also helps in the long term as well, as gamers will look to services all the more as we move toward that consoleless future.
Spencer began to steer Xbox away from a device forward thinking to a gamer first plan about four years ago, but believes that continuing the path of forcing players to buy a box to own the ecosystem and services will ultimately limit the developers, since their games would have to be built to different devices and potentially unavailable to the wider audience. “I want to see the creators that I have relationships with reach all two billion people who play games, and not have to turn their studio into something that makes match-3 games rather than story-driven single player games. Because that’s the only way to reach a bigger platform. That is our goal: to bring high-quality games to every device possible on the planet,” said Spencer.
It will be interesting to see how this develops in the future, but for now Microsoft has already confirmed that their next-gen Xbox is in development.