As Microsoft opts to launch at least some of its Xbox exclusives on rival consoles, the company’s gaming boss Phil Spencer has reflected on Sony’s recent, hugely-successful launch of online, cross-platform shooter Helldivers 2 on PC and PlayStation 5.
“I will say, when I look at a game like Helldivers 2 – and it’s a great game, kudos to the team shipping on PC and PlayStation – I’m not exactly sure who it helps in the industry by not being on Xbox,” Spencer told Game File. “If you try to twist yourself to say, like, somehow that benefited somebody somewhere.
“But I get it. There’s a legacy in console gaming that we’re going to benefit by shipping games and not putting them on other places. We do the same thing.”
During last night’s Xbox business update podcast, Spencer reflected further on how he believed platform exclusivity was a shrinking part of the games business.
It’s a topic Xbox also discussed last year with the US Federal Trade Commission, when Spencer explained how big console exclusive game launches only wobbled the needle of longer-term PlayStation and Xbox console sale trends.
“I have a fundamental belief that over the next five to 10 years, exclusive games – games that are exclusive to one piece of hardware – are going to be a smaller and smaller piece of the games industry,” Spencer said last night, pointing to the majority of games launching on a mix of consoles and/or PC and mobile across the industry.”
Sony already launches most of its own first-party games on PC, of course, albeit not day and date with their PlayStation versions, leaving Nintendo as the only major outlier.
Perhaps unsurprisingly however, speaking to Game File, Spencer said he did not expect Microsoft’s upcoming launch of four Xbox games across PlayStation and Nintendo Switch to mean any kind of reciprocal move was likely.
“This is not for me, like, some kind of bartering system,” Spencer concluded. “We’re doing it for the better of Xbox’s business.”
Last night, Microsoft also said its next Xbox would deliver the largest technical leap seen in a hardware generation.
