Xbox One Focusing On First Party Over Third-Party Exclusive, Says Phil Spencer
Microsoft’s timed-exclusivity deal with Square Enix for Rise of the Tomb Raider on the Xbox One is still a hotly discussed topic in the games industry. Don’t expect many deals with third-party publishers like that in the future though as Xbox Head Phil Spencer made clear that the long-term strategy for the console is first-party exclusives like Halo 5: Guardians, Forza Motorsport 6, and Quantum Break.
“My Strategy is more around our own first party franchises, and investing in franchises that we own, and probably fewer exclusive deals for third party content,” a tired looking Spencer told the Chinese gaming site, Gamecore(via Reddit), at the Chinajoy convention. “I want to have strong third party relations, but paying for many third party exclusives isn’t our long term strategy.”
“This year, the fact that we’re shipping Halo 5, Gears of War, Forza 6, Fable, we can only do that and build that best line-up we’ve ever seen really on the back of franchises that we own,” he continued. “It’s great to have Tomb Raider as part of our line-up, but investing in first party, you’ll see more of that at Gamescom next week, is really core to our strategy.”
Gamescom will indeed be a big week for the team at Xbox as they are planning to show Quantum Break, Scalebound, and Crackdown as part of its livestreamed media briefing event along with a Halo 5 invitational tournament. That’s after showing newly announced exclusives such as ReCore from Keiji Inafune, ION from Dean Hall, and Sea of Thieves from Rare during the E3 press conference in June.
Meanwhile, Microsoft’s overall developer studio structure looks better prepared to handle multiple first-party exclusive than at any time in the Xbox’s history. There are the AAA studios of 343 Industries, Turn 10 Studios, Lionhead Studios, Rare, The Coalition, Remedy, and Cloudgine. Those are backed up by AAA studios who have Microsoft published games such as Armature and Platinum.
There are a number of smaller studios under the Xbox umbrella, as well. Mojang tops the list with its mega-hit Minecraft, but there is also Motiga, Undead Labs, Team Dakota, Twisted Pixel, Press Play, BigPark, and The Behemoth.
Microsoft will need all of these studios to pump out a steady diet of exclusive games for the Xbox One and Windows 10, and it’s hard to argue with the approach. Fan reactions to third-party games and their DLC has largely been negative even when it is contingent on the gaming being developed, such as Titanfall for the Xbox One and Super Street Fighter V for the PS4.
What do you think of Spencer’s statements about Xbox One exclusive games? Sound off in the comments below.
[Images via Xbox]
