Phil Spencer has been a very busy man at E3 2018 between all of the press interviews, conferences and panels such as “Gaming For Everyone” that he presented at the E3 2018 coliseum. It was at the last moments of that panel when asked how Microsoft would improve the Windows gaming experience that he freely admitted, they have a long way to go.
While Spencer believes early attempts such as Games for Windows Live were well intentioned, it was clear that Microsoft was trying to bring over what he called “imposter console work”, which the PC market saw right through. “Some of our early efforts were really more console to PC than respecting the PC audience and the things they were looking for.” Said Spencer.
PC app development has slowed, according to Spencer due to efforts to rethink how they’re handling the PC platform and how they can meet PC gamers where they are, instead of trying to dislodge them and force console ideas onto a platform they don’t work on and don’t work for the players there. Xbox Live integration with Discord was one such idea, as something that doesn’t make much sense on the console side, but wants to tie in PC gamers to something they use. The effort is supposed to pay off in the future with more native apps that actually do what those players want them to.