Xbox President Sarah Bond has an interesting new message to employees, that we might be hearing in public very soon.
As reported by Inverse, Sarah told Xbox’s team in an internal meeting that “every screen is an Xbox.” She then explained that the company would be expanding their plans to expand their business on multiple devices. They hope to make Xbox the number one cross-platform gaming company.
This complements an earlier report on the same internal meeting, where Microsoft Gaming head Phil Spencer then told Xbox employees that Microsoft won’t stop making video game consoles. Basically, Xbox will continue to be part of the strategy for cross-platform gaming.
These little tidbits are coming ahead of the planned Xbox podcast later today, where Sarah and Phil will be joined by Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty, so that they can announce their plans for the future of Xbox with the public.
It’s been a contentious past week for Xbox, as rumors started swirling of bigger and bigger games being floated about to possibly come to the competitor console, the PlayStation 5. A notable incident around all this was the rumor floating around that Starfield, which had been touted as an Xbox console exclusive as a marketing point, would be one of those games. The thing is, we later reported that one of the sources of that rumor took it back, claiming he had misread information given to him and that it was fiction.
But let’s talk about something else here. What could Microsoft possibly mean if they said that they still needed a dedicated video game console if they were going cross platform? Surely, if they were bringing their games to PlayStation 5, which most gamers presumably have anyway, doesn’t that mean an Xbox isn’t necessary?
Here is where we talk about the nature of competition. Microsoft owning their own platform still allows them to set boundaries and make decisions that they would not be able to otherwise. For example, if Sony decides to make it difficult for Microsoft to publish Call of Duty games on PlayStation, by withholding dev kits or other resources, Microsoft can still deliver those games on Xbox. While the games will also be on PC, on Xbox they don’t have to share a cut of their revenue/profit.
Furthermore, in the current scenario where many games are only available on Xbox and Steam, Microsoft can offer a better deal than you can get on Steam – a large library of games, including a guaranteed library of first party titles, for less money than most gamers spend on Steam sales annually.
As long as Xbox hardware is still around, Sony will still feel the need to compete on the hardware side. That’s at least one part of the status quo that needs to stick around.
