Phil Spencer is having a very good Gamescom conference and now he’s talking an awful lot about what he feels is going to be the future of his company, as well as the gaming industry as a whole. In a recent interview the Microsoft exec says that movies and television tie-ins are going to be very important to the gaming industry in the very near future. “We really let the franchise owners try and drive the direction of what they wanna do. There’s certain franchises that we have that let themselves to video, TV, even potentially movies,” Spencer said to the BBC’s Steffan Powell.
Spencer also talked about what he thinks will help bring the Xbox One back into real competition with the PS4. He went to great lengths to make sure everyone knew that he thinks what Sony has managed to do with the PS4 is impressive. He also believes that the company has made strides to actually make up ground. The company’s showing at E3 was one of the first steps towards actually making this a battle again. Spencer is obviously pretty happy the console hasn’t been left in the dust.
The entire interview can be seen below, but the comments about the tie-ins to movies and television shows are the most interesting. Games like World of Warcraft and Assassin’s Creed are getting their own movies in the next few years. While this path hasn’t been exactly successful on the big screen in the past, it appears the new projects have more support from Hollywood and that should help. Just how many other games are going to get big time movies in the future won’t be known for a while.