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Microsoft announced yesterday that four Xbox-exclusive games are coming to PS5 and Nintendo Switch soon, opening up a new strategy for Xbox to be on more screens. Just two hours before Microsoft’s big announcement, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer explained the company’s new Xbox vision in an internal memo to employees.
The Verge has obtained a copy of the memo. It’s the first time Spencer has fully outlined a new strategy “where every screen is an Xbox” to employees, after an internal town hall meeting earlier this month didn’t address multi-platform games directly.
Microsoft didn’t directly mention “Xbox everywhere” or “every screen is an Xbox” during its official Xbox podcast yesterday, but it’s not too dissimilar to what the company has been saying for years about its push for Xbox games across consoles, PCs, and cloud gaming. The big difference this time is that the vision has been adjusted to include bringing those Xbox games to rival consoles.
I spoke to Spencer earlier this week about the new Xbox vision, next-gen hardware, and more. You can read that interview here, and Spencer’s internal Microsoft memo, below:
Today at noon Pacific, we’ll be posting a special episode of the Official Xbox Podcast.
In this episode, Sarah Bond, Matt Booty and I will share with the community our plans for the future of Xbox. We’ll also discuss how our vision will benefit our players, creators, and the industry as a whole.
When we look at the state of our medium, we see players increasingly gaming on multiple devices, but their experience is defined by the fragmentation created by platform silos. Multi-device players have to navigate multiple identities, entitlement libraries, communities, wallets, and reward programs. Similarly, the industry’s biggest franchises increasingly ship across multiple devices, requiring creators to build and manage multiple instances of their games, leading to higher costs and fragmented communities. All of this friction creates a tremendous opportunity for us to meet the needs of multi-device players and creators.
We have a different vision for the future of gaming. A future where players have a unified experience across devices. A future where players can easily discover a vast array of games with a diverse spectrum of business models. A future where more creators are empowered to realize their creative vision, reach a global audience, unite their communities, and succeed commercially. A future where every screen is an Xbox.
This is a future where Xbox is everywhere—consistent with our promise to empower players to “play the games you want, with the people you want, anywhere you want.”
