Microsoft had a strong E3 press conference this year. The company showcased an array of promising games: from AAA titles like Forza 7, Sea of Thieves, and State of Decay 2, to smaller titles like The Last Night, Ori and the Will of the Wisp, Cuphead, and Ashen, all of which are console exclusive or console launch exclusive to Xbox One. It even announced that original Xbox titles are coming to Xbox One backwards compatibility.
However, one criticism launched its way is the lack of system-selling, “big” AAA exclusives — which bar Forza 7 — weren’t really present at the show. But that doesn’t mean Xbox head Phil Spencer hasn’t heard fans and their criticism of the lack of said games currently coming to Xbox One in the next 18 months.
Further, he has assured said fans that he and his team are investing in this area, and actually recently signed a few things. And while these things from a PR standpoint would be easily to attach a trailer too and present at the show, it’s not something he is ultimately interested in doing (in presenting games this way that are another two and half, three years away).
Spencer specifically says the following to VICE’s Waypoint:
“We are investing in new things, we signed things just recently that I thought, ‘Hey, from a PR standpoint it would be really easy for me to put a trailer on screen’, but then I know the game is not coming for another two and half or three years, so I didn’t want to do that.”
Spencer mentions that when he started his current job three years ago, hardware was the big focus for the team, and he believed there was more to be done in this area. And now with the Xbox One S and the incoming Xbox One X, Spencer is happy with the company’s hardware front. But what good is great hardware without continual great software to play on it? This is often been the criticism that’s been making its way around the block when talking about the Xbox One X. And it’s a criticism, again, Spencer is fully aware of.
According to the Xbox head, investing in software is important to Microsoft. Further, the team realizes it needs to invest in content in the gaming space. Spencer specifically says the following about the issue:
“This is a cheesy line, but I’ll just say, trust that this is important to us as a platform. From the top CEO of the company down, if you talked to Satya [Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO] he would say ‘I understand, we need to invest in content in the gaming space.’
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Big, triple A console games, I hear that and I’m committed to that. Today I wanted to talk about things that if you’re going to buy the console you will be able to play, but I’ll continue to work to deliver games. We did on hardware, we did on platform and [backward] compatibility and we will do this on first-party as well. It is critically important.”