‘No Red Lines’ For Xbox Games On Other Platforms, Says Phil Spencer

Things are changing fast at Xbox as it continues its march toward becoming what is essentially a third party publisher…that also makes hardware.

In a new interview with Bloomberg, Spencer made news acknowledging that they’d make a handheld unit at some point in the next few yerars, but more pressingly, made a pretty plain declaration about Xbox’s plans for exclusive games:

“I do not see sort of red lines in our portfolio that say ‘thou must not,’” Spencer said, also saying that it’s “too early” to make any decision on the next Halo game.

If there ever was going to be a red line, it certainly felt like Halo would be it. I suppose Spencer is not saying that all games will come to other platforms, but nothing is off the table. It further compounds the current situation where some games are not on other platforms, yet (Starfield), some are timed exclusives (Indiana Jones) and some are not exclusive at all at launch (Call of Duty, Doom: The Dark Ages).

Once upon a time when Microsoft was making its case to the courts about the fact that they wouldn’t take Call of Duty exclusive, they gave the example of new IP made by its own internal studios (like Starfield, Avowed) as the type of game that would be exclusive. While that may indeed currently be the case, well, no red lines, as he says.

It’s a somewhat bizarre situation for Xbox fans, as the brand is slowly losing its identity and owning a literal Xbox no longer seems all that necessary. It’s almost encouraged by Microsoft, at this point. That was sort of the case before this with all games coming to PC, but if things start heading to PlayStation, that’s a different story.

Spencer maintains that the Xbox business is in the healthiest spot it’s ever been, and the company did just have a big win in the form of megahit Black Ops 6, where Xbox may have lost game sales, but they are estimated to rack up a few million more Xbox Game Pass subscribers, which is all they really care about these days, not software sales, not hardware sales.

It still feels inescapably weird that Spencer has now opened the door for any game to come to Xbox, icons of the brand like Gears of War and Halo, but also all these new, upcoming big titles like Fable and Perfect Dark. Not that Sony is without its own problems with sales of massively expensive games limited by hardware reach, and recently producing the biggest game launch failure of all time (Concord) as part of its live service ambitions, but it’s also unclear if Xbox’s path is the right one, and it continues to be confusing, more than anything.

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