Even before COVID-19 seemingly changed the world forever, the video game industry was in a major state of flux. With the rise of subscription services, streaming and major tech companies like Apple, Facebook and Amazon coming into the fray, we are in for a transformative few years no doubt. Microsoft has another system coming out this year, and it’s coming out this year whether games will be ready or not apparently, and how are they looking at this changing landscape? Well, it seems Phil Spencer thinks the community is the key.
In a video interview with CNBC, the Xbox Head was asked about the changing world of gaming. Specifically, about the tech giants mentioned above making waves in the gaming industry. He said that he sees the big leverage for them as the incredible Xbox community they have managed to build over three console generations through their various services, such as Xbox Live and Game Pass, as well as their upcoming pushes for cloud and streaming that this community will drive.
“We’re seeing the big tech players come in and see this gaming opportunity.. we really think in order to achieve success you need great content, a large gaming community and more and more we’re leveraging our cloud assets at Microsoft to deliver our products to people on the devices they already have.
“We have a long history, and it’s why the 90 million people on Xbox Live is a really important metric, a community of people already coming to Microsoft looking for their gaming entertainment, looking for those great games, those great Minecraft experiences… we have great content from our first party and our third parties on our platform.
“We have a large community and this cloud asset which is something we’re really leveraging right now, the partnership between Xbox and Azure is very strong right now. We have hundreds of thousands of people even in our preview [of xCloud].”
While Microsoft stumbled at the beginning of this gen, they have done a pretty good job of recovery over the last few years. The world is changing, though, so it’ll be interesting to see what the landscape of it all will look like down the road.