Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft Gaming, spoke about the company’s plans to further expand on the success of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. In an interview with Variety, Spencer was asked about whether Microsoft has larger plans for the franchise, to which Spencer responded by saying he was quite happy with critical and commercial response to Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.
Along with this, Spencer also spoke about how there was still quite a bit to explore when it came to the Indiana Jones franchise.
“I will say, we’re really happy with ‘Indy‘ and the players and the reception,” said Spencer. “We do think there’s life in that franchise, and I’m just gonna leave it at that. We’re launching on PlayStation here pretty soon. I think that’ll be a cool moment.”
Spencer also spoke about how developer MachineGames worked on Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and how it had come to the decision to make it into a first-person game rather than it having the third-person camera that titles like Uncharted have traditionally featured. Spencer also wants to give more freedom to studios under Microsoft to make games in the company’s own franchises.
“I was really inspired by MachineGames taking someone else’s IP and doing something so unique, and I’m inspired about what that team can do next,” he said. “Certain people were kind of pushing them on the first person versus third person. And I think once you play it, you realize you are Indy. But going forward, I also want to give the teams the ability to do our own games and our own franchises. We have a lot of room to tell new stories, as well. And I want to make sure that’s an option for us.”
Spencer had also answered questions about other games during the same interview. In one of the answers, he alluded to Microsoft having planned video game releases for later this year that still haven’t been officially announced.
“For us and the rest of this calendar year, I really feel great about the slate of games,” said Spencer. “We just had Avowed come out, and I have to go backwards and just say Obsidian continues to do a great job. We’ve obviously talked about The Outer Worlds 2, South of Midnight, DOOM. There’s more stuff, some stuff that’s unannounced and I’m walking in my head to make sure I don’t leak anything.”
He also spoke about Microsoft’s relationship with Nintendo, and how the company plans on continuing support for the company with releases on the Switch 2 in a similar way as how the company released titles on the original Switch.
“It lets us continue to grow our community of people that care about the franchises that we have, and that’s really important for us to make sure we continue to invest in our games,” he said about Microsoft’s partnership with Nintendo. “I’m really a big believer in what Nintendo means for this industry and us continuing to support them. And getting the support from them for our franchises, I think, is an important part of our future.”
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle has been out on PC and Xbox Series X/S for some time now. The PS5 releases is happening later today. Check out our review of the PS5 version of the game for more details.
