Over the last year, Xbox has been under one massive spotlight: a giant acquisition and court case, speculation about its upcoming AAA portfolio, Starfield on the horizon, questions around third-party game parity across both its consoles, Game Pass, and so much more. Naturally, we have tons of questions about all of this, and at gamescom 2023, we were finally able to get some answers from Xbox head Phil Spencer about almost everything.
Elsewhere we’ve zoomed in on Spencer’s comments about more Final Fantasy games coming to Xbox and his opinions on Baldur’s Gate 3. But here’s absolutely everything we chatted about in our big gamescom interview with Phil Spencer, in full:
IGN: Starfield is a huge moment for Xbox, obviously. When is the last time Xbox has had a moment this big?
PS: Well, I think everything, every month, every time we’re doing something that changes, hopefully enhances a customer’s experience on Xbox is important. You think about big, new IP that has launched on the platform, I might go back to just doing Gears 1, I don’t know, a game that is brand new, new IP. It’s Todd’s first game in the [Bethesda Game Studios] team as part of Xbox launching on the platform. It’s a big moment and I’m proud that we were able to give him time and really, really happy with the results. You have a build, but you’re not playing because you’re working.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is the talk of the town right now. This RPG comes along, takes the internet by storm. Do you think it’s set expectations for Starfield or did it steal a little bit of thunder?
PS: I don’t think it has anything to do with Starfield. Great games coming out is a good thing for the industry. First, congrats to Larian and the team. I think it’s, what, a 97 rated game [on Metacritic] or something? As somebody who finished the original Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate 2 and what was the expansion for Baldur’s Gate 1, Forgotten Shores or something? I’m a huge Baldur’s Gate fan, and to see a team spend the time to make, I think, a true next iteration of a classic gaming franchise is always just great for the industry.
Speaking of next iterations, Skyrim came out, what, 12 years ago? Just did the anniversary edition and it’s been supported by an amazing modding community. Has the same thought been put towards Starfield and supporting it into the future?
PS: Absolutely. And I don’t want to disclose what the team has been thinking about, but obviously, when you’re BGS and you’ve seen the legs and the support that Skyrim gets, even today when you look at what the modders have done, it went into the thinking about what Starfield should be and proof will be out in terms of how people receive the game, but our hope is that it is another game that’s around a decade plus longer, later after it launches, and people are still enjoying it.
I think the last time you were in the hot seat was over at our friends, Kinda Funny, and doing the X Cast around the launch of Redfall, which was obviously problematic at launch. Have any internal processes or procedures been changed to make sure that sort of reaction or issue doesn’t arise again?
PS: Well, we’re always learning in everything we do, no doubt about that. I would say that, and I’ve shared some of this, but with Redfall, it was more of us not using our internal processes that were in place already, just because of when integration happened, I’m not using COVID as an excuse, but we did close the ZeniMax acquisition and then everybody got sent home, and it was just not as easy as maybe some of the earlier companies, studios that we’d acquired in terms of integrating in our process, but that’s all on us. So I’m not trying to deflect any of the criticism, but absolutely, anytime we launch anything, and we’re going to learn from the launch of Starfield, we’re going to learn from the launch of Forza and we reevaluate our process because we want to make sure we’re exceeding customers’ expectations with everything we do.
Yeah, I’m always curious about that. What causes that result? Is it the cert process? What wall is hit where that sort of stuff is missed? I appreciate you being candid about it.
PS: Yeah, and I’d say one of the things that was helpful for us with Starfield was our long working relationship with BGS, which you know well, if you go back to original Xbox in what we’ve done with those teams. So the relationship between Todd, BGS, and our platform team was just stronger than it was with Harvey and the team at Arcane, not because of anything other than just relationships. We’ve just known them longer. So Todd brought in and the team brought in the [Advanced Technology Group] early to start working on Starfield, and that’s on us. We should’ve done that with Arkane, we should’ve helped them more in the development process, and also just made it clear that shipping a first-party game has a different level of expectation, that it’s not always true that every team that comes into being part of a first party is aware of when it launches. Feel great about where we are with Starfield. We put out the review codes last week, so we’re giving reviewers plenty of time to spend time with the game, and I think all of that’s just a sign of the confidence that we have.
Another game here, though, that we got BCD was Forza Motorsport. You’re showing off the Italian track. I can’t remember the name off the top of my head, but a big improvement graphically from what we saw at Summer of Gaming. I am curious, though, what are your thoughts on how Forza Motorsports sets itself apart?
PS: I’ll start with Turn 10. I think, from the beginning of Turn 10, when that studio was formed, they’ve always been a technical showcase for us. A gentleman named Chris Tector is the tech architect for us there and has just done a great job of getting everything out of the hardware. I’m a huge Motorsport fan, I’ve been from the time we launched that, so I’ve been playing builds and seeing the progress that they’ve been making.
And I think you’re right, graphically where they are right now, it’s stunning, the game, what they’re doing with ray tracing and other things, but I always love that Turn 10 has been able to start with Motorsport, expand to Horizon, which Forza Horizon is now a top-tier Xbox franchise. I think you can’t argue about that. It’s just the number of players that game builds and their relationship with Playground and what they’re doing with Fable. It’s just been awesome to see how Turn 10, a studio that was literally just homegrown within Xbox, has turned into such a force for us.
Got any teases for Fable, seeing you brought it up?
PS: I was actually on Project Ego, the first Fable that we launched, which I find some humor in the code name was Project Ego with all the personalities involved, but it’s nice to see the team embracing what was Fable, the humor, the choice and consequence and everything. So really looking forward to showing more.
Going back to Forza, you actually dropped the number. So is Forza Motorsport becoming a service platform or what’s with the change?
PS: Yeah. Service platform, I hesitate a little bit because I think there’s a lot of loadedness in what that means. I think what we see with Forza is the evolution of the experience as much about the tech as it is tracks and cars. And we know that, when people make an investment in the game, they want to make sure we continue to support the game. And in some ways, when you put a numeral on the end of the franchise, it instantly says, “Okay, well, now you need to move to Forza and plus one.” And it’s like, no, we want this to be a place that people feel like they can invest their time, they can invest their experience, and know that this is a place that we’re going to be investing in Forza Motorsport for years to come.
You’ve had a ton of reveals. Avowed was revealed. Perfect Dark, South of midnight, Hellblade, Hellblade 2: Senua’s Sacrifice. Can you tell us more about the rest of 2023 and beyond and what that’s looking like for Xbox?
PS: What I can say is we’re going to have more beats to talk about more of what we do because the content lineup is so strong. And I say that completely recognizing that 2022 wasn’t so strong, but we have our biggest booth here at gamescom and we have a huge presence. I think there’s 30 plus playable games on our floor, a lot of the first-party games. Towerborne is here, Ara [History Untold], is here, obviously Forza. So it’s awesome to see the footprint that we have and the game portfolio from our first party, from partners, from Game Pass, all of it.
So I think what you’re going to see from us, where maybe last couple of years we’ve been more on an annual in terms of when we talk about our games around, I still call it E3, around the E3 timeframe, this year, we did Developer Direct in January, we did our showcase, we’re here and the biggest we’ve ever been at gamescom, and you’re going to see more regular times to talk about our games because the portfolio is deep enough that we can support that.
Matt Booty promised us four first party games per year. Are you on track?
PS: More than that this year. If we start with Hi-Fi [Rush], Minecraft Legends, Redfall. Maybe people don’t want to give us credit for Redfall, I get it, but I understand. Starfield, Forza, we just dropped Age [of Empires] 4 console last night. Awesome. I’m going to play that. And then going into next year, absolutely. We have talked about it as an aspiration, now we talk about it as our plan.
I don’t know if you heard, Final Fantasy 14 is finally coming to Xbox. Now, [the CEO of Square] hinted that other games could be coming. So where’s Final Fantasy 7? Are we going to get 16? What does that mean?
PS: I recognize that, when people buy an Xbox, they want to make sure the great games that they want to play are coming. And if there’s any publisher out there where that hasn’t been true, Square is one of the top profiles. So Sarah Bond and I fly to Tokyo, have conversations, and we’ve spent a lot of time with Square. There’s obviously business deals and relationships that will have to get worked through on certain games, but I’ll say it was really great to have the CEO of Square and Yoshi there to just talk about their commitment to Xbox because I can say, “I’m the head of Xbox, blah, blah, blah,” but having the CEO of one of the third parties make a commitment to the platform I thought was a really meaningful step.
So you’ll hear more. I’m not going to push them. They’re going to have to find their own rhythm, but having him make a commitment to Xbox was really important both to me and I’ve heard it from the community, to the community, as well. And 14 was more of a commitment.
You just had this big announcement about some sort of CMA issue where you’re partnering with Ubisoft. What does that mean for video games if the Activision deal closes? Can you just explain it to me because I don’t get it?
PS: Fundamentally, we are trying to bring more games to more people. And we think doing the deal with Ubisoft, which frees up one of the concerns that the [Competition and Markets Authority], which is the UK regulatory board where acquisitions get handled, will allow more games to go to more people. We’ve always thought we would do that as well, but Ubisoft’s a good partner. We know them. They’re independent from us. So we say any kind of concerns that we may dictate where the games go, hopefully is alleviated now and allow us to continue to move forward in what we’re working on with the deal. We still have work to do there, but we think it’s a good step, bring more games to more people, which has been what this is about.
So if I want to play, is it just cloud streaming or will it have an impact on Game Pass?
PS: It is the rights that will go to Ubisoft when the deal closes are the cloud streaming rights for [Activision Blizzard King] games.
So Call of Duty, I can still boot that up on Game Pass potentially once the deal closes?
PS: Yeah. On ABK, and I’m going to a different answer now just because the way you asked that. I want to make sure people know that there’s work to actually move games to Game Pass. So for people who think the deal’s going to close, then everything’s available. That’s not true. And it hasn’t been true in other acquisitions that we’ve done. There’s work for us to go do, just mechanical work for us to go do. So it’ll take us time, definitely time to get the games in the portfolio. But this has nothing to do with making native games available in Game Pass. This is all about the Ubisoft relationship is all about the cloud streaming rights for ABK games. ABK being Activision-Blizzard-King, it’s really Activision and Blizzard since they have the kind of pay to play games.
Let me say, it’s in addition to other deals that we’ve done, like GeForce and Boosteroid, Ubitus, other deals. I think there’s some GeForce announcements going out now about our PC games starting to hit there. So if you’re a GeForce now subscriber and you’re a Game Pass subscriber, you’re starting to be able to stream the PC versions of those games, which I think is an awesome part of this as well.
Getting more games to more people has been what this is about. Not taking games away from PlayStation. That’s not what it is. We look at the success of Xbox is how many people are playing Xbox games and that’s important to us.
Let’s talk Xbox Series X. So the console’s three years old. Where are we at with the timeline of the console? Are we at the beginning? Are we in the middle?
PS: I think we’re still, I think we’re kind of at the end of the beginning, if that makes any sense. I think the supply issues early on lengthened the beginning to some extent, both on cost as well as just availability.
I think from a game dev standpoint, not just us but third parties, you’re really just now starting to see, I think the swell of games that got slowed up through COVID production now starting to launch. I think we have 85 games launching in the industry between now and tomorrow.
It seems like there’s so many games coming right now that we’re starting to get through the beginning of this generation, and hopefully into a place where, as an owner of a console, you’ve got games that are taking full advantage of the hardware and are great games for people to go play. And I look at the lineup over the rest of this year from third parties alone and it’s fantastic.
What’s next for gaming hardware? Are better graphics still enough to differentiate?
PS: I think better graphics, more realistic feel will always be important. I also love that different form factors are coming out. I thought what Valve did with the Steam Deck was awesome. I’m traveling with my ROG Ally when I’m here having a great time playing games.
I feel like it’s a remote Xbox for me. I log in, my communities there, my games are there. All devs should support cross save. So that’s to you, Remnant 2 team. I’m playing a ton of Remnant 2, but I can’t move to PC. But I just love the fact that I’m able to take my saved games where I go and play. So I love that hardware is becoming more diverse both in price point and in form factor and usability so that more people are playing.
Do you have any news about some sort of mid-generation refresh for Xbox?
PS: No, no. We’re doing right now the increased storage on the Series S. But no, like I said, we’re kind of at the end of the beginning in my mind. So I think we need to let devs settle on this hardware and get the most out of it. But in terms of increased frame rate, increased resolution, I just look at what goes on on PC with high-end GPUs, high-end CPU, and it’s not always just about pixel count or frame resolution. I think there’s lighting techniques. There’s a bunch of things that go into what makes a game look and feel great. And we have a ton of headroom as an industry there.
The Baldur’s Gate 3 team brought up some issues with Xbox Series S and split screen, getting it to work properly. I know the Forza team announced that it won’t launch with local split screen. Is there some future where you allow developers just to launch on the Series X versus S because there’s the parity clause right now and I’m curious, will that ever be loosened up a bit?
PS: I want to decouple these issues a little bit. The decision to do split screen or not is a creative decision, a dev decision. So if we think about Forza, it has nothing to do with any kind of hardware thing on S and X, just where they wanted to focus their time.
We obviously see the data in terms of how many people play local co-op for games. I love local co-op. Shout out to Vampire Survivors that just launched it. Fantastic. But there’s also just a let’s go where the play is in terms of where we’re going to focus our dev resources.
In terms of the two platforms, I want games to launch on both platforms. There are feature differences between the platforms. We have an ability to kind of handle that and how it works. Where teams are going to choose to focus their time and their effort is up to them. We’re here to support them and what they want to go do. We want to make sure that games when they’re launching on competitive platforms are also launching on Xbox.
So we’re going to learn from this experience as well because we don’t love that. But I don’t think it’s something that’s a fatal flaw in the system. It’s partners prioritizing their time, us listening and being a good partner to them. And you see some amazing games doing great work across S and X. Diablo looks great, Starfield looks great. Forza looks great across both. And I want to make sure console gaming is accessible to more people, and we think the price point of the console is a pretty important part of that.
Yeah, I love the Series S, but there’s been that conversation going around, so I wanted to ask you about it.
PS: Yeah, no, I think it’s a fair question. I will say that I think some of the discussion in the community has maybe not come from us or the devs. It’s been more the community building, well, this happened and then that happened and then so it must be about this. And I think we can do more to add clarity to actually where we are, and I look forward to doing that.
So you threw like 300 devs out to Larian to help them get Baldur’s game on Xbox?
PS: It wasn’t 300, but absolutely. No. It’s a great game. They’re an important partner. I’m meeting with them here at Gamescom. It’s a game I want to see on the platform, and we have resources that helped in terms of making sure it’s going to- I think they’ve said it’s going to ship by the end of the year. I think that’s their words in terms of what they’ve said. But we should together come up with clarity to set some expectations for Xbox fans, and I look forward to doing that.
So what else do we have? Game Pass does seem to be a bit of a tough sell for a lot of executives, I guess you would call them. [inaudible] was one of those people that testified to it being a tough sell for him to bring Call of Duty to Game Pass. After closing, how are you going to breach that sort of ideological difference between you both?
PS: Well, there’s a different person making the decisions. That’s one thing. On Game Pass, it’s not necessarily true that every game looks at Game Pass and says that’s the opportunity for me. If you’re a massively successful Triple-A franchise that has double-digit million marketing budget to go drive awareness and discovery of your game day one, and that’s part of your model, I totally understand why you wouldn’t window your game day one into a subscription. I got no issue with that.
We do it as a first party because we’re trying to grow the subscription, and we’re looking at the overall health of the subscription as an outcome. We love that. We see it grow on console, more growth on PC definitely now, which has been awesome, especially sitting here in Germany. We think about all the PC players here.
So I just got out actually of a round table with a bunch of indie development leads, studio heads, and the subscription helps them. It helps them in terms of dev funding, certainty in what they can go build. Every game that’s in Game Pass is available for sale. So we’re not trying to turn the world into a subscription only world, I promise. That’s not our plan. And we think it’s a great model for certain teams. And for other teams that decide it’s not the right model for them ever or right now, that’s also totally cool as well.
Phil Spencer wasn’t the only person of note we caught up with at gamescom. We’ve got an interview with Todd Howard, more interviews to come the rest of the week with folks like Zack Snyder and Geoff Keighley, and you can catch up on everything announced at gamescom Opening Night Live right here.
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