Xbox Boss Believes First-Party Exclusives Are Key to Console's Future
Xbox Boss Phil Spencer has been talking a lot about the strategy into trying to make the Xbox One (and future consoles) the No.1 console in the world. In an interview with Gamecores, he revealed that to him, getting first-party exclusives (and not timed exclusives like Rise of the Tomb Raider) are the future for Xbox:
“My strategy is more around our own first-party franchises, and investing in franchises that we own and probably fewer deals for exclusive third-party content. I want to have strong third party relations, but paying for many third-party exclusives isn’t our long term strategy.”
He added: “This year, the fact that we’re shipping Halo 5, Gears of War, Forza 6, Fable – we can only do that and build the best line-up we’ve ever seen really on the back of the franchises we own. 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.”
This is not an unsurprising move by Microsoft and Xbox, as they’ve never been shy about revealing new IPs. In fact, at E3 this year, they revealed several that would be coming in the next year or so potentially. Will they be able to maintain the levels of exclusives they want though? Time will tell.