Xbox First Parties Have Not Been Mandated To Make Cross-Gen Games, Says Phil Spencer

When it comes to their approach to next-gen, Microsoft have made their position perfectly clear. Rather than sticking to the traditional generation model, Microsoft are instead going for a cross-gen approach. Just recently, in fact, Xbox boss Phil Spencer re-iterated that all Microsoft games in the next couple of years would be coming to both, Xbox One and Xbox Series X.

Given how this stands in contrast to how hardware manufacturers have traditionally backed their console launches with exclusive content, Microsoft’s new approach is clearly an interesting one. And according to Phil Spencer, it’s something that comes from both Microsoft as a publisher and the studios and what they want to make.

Speaking in an interview (which you can see below) with GameStar (via ResetEra), Spencer said that no studio has been given the mandate to make cross-gen games, and they all have the choice to make Xbox Series X exclusives if they wish to.

“As you know we’ve added a lot of studios to the to the Xbox Game Studios organization over the last few years and providing them the financial stability, the creative freedom to go build the games that they want to go build, and our game creators want to build great games that can reach a large audience of players,” Spencer said. “So I think what you hear Matt [Booty] talking about and what our creators will say is we have a vision for every game that we’re building and the vision starts with the player, not the device.”

“If a creator comes to us and says ‘No, I really want to focus on next generation’ with their games, we’re completely open to that and we’re very supportive of that,” he continued. “If a creator comes to us and says I have this vision for reaching these customers across different platforms and different generations we’re completely supportive of that.

“It is really about our creators having choice and allowing them to build the games that they want to build to reach the audience that they’re looking for and not things that we’re mandating to our creators in terms of what they have to go do. It’s not our rules for our platform it’s more about creators creating the games that they want to go build looking ahead.”

Microsoft Xbox Games Showcase is scheduled for July 23, and we’re going to see a lot of what Microsoft’s first parties have been working on at the event. The show will be roughly an hour long, and the campaign gameplay debut of Halo Infinite has been confirmed.