Microsoft’s Phil Spencer needs gamers to have extra choices past the first-party shops tied to consoles.
Spencer has all the time appeared eager on making a extra open and accessible digital atmosphere for gamers and has usually mentioned lowering platform fragmentation and offering prospects with extra choices and management over the place they play or buy their video games.
Talking with Polygon at GDC 2024, Microsoft’s CEO of Gaming mentioned the thought of offering Xbox customers with further methods to buy titles by including third-party shops such because the Epic Video games Retailer, Itch.io, or GOG to the console as a substitute of forcing customers to purchase from the official Xbox storefront.
In keeping with Spencer, further shops on consoles would mirror PCs, the place there are a number of choices, which advantages not solely the shopper but additionally the console maker.
“[Consider] our historical past because the Home windows firm,” mentioned Spencer. “No one would blink twice if I mentioned, ‘Hey, if you’re utilizing a PC, you get to determine the kind of expertise you’ve gotten [by picking where to buy games]. There’s actual worth in that.”
Historically, console makers offered {hardware} at a loss, a method generally known as a subsidy, hoping to make up the cash later via recreation gross sales. However, with stagnant console gross sales and rising {hardware} prices, this technique is turning into much less efficient as a result of the value of console parts isn’t declining as quickly as with earlier generations.
And, in contrast to the flourishing PC and handheld markets, the console market is experiencing little development. The latest figures from Circana (NPD) report that whereas whole spending was up 2%, {hardware} gross sales declined 30% year-over-year in February 2024 and a 19% decline year-to-date.
A part of this stems from PCs offering customers a selection in the place they purchase video games, making subsidizing {hardware} “more difficult in at the moment’s world,” Spencer mentioned. Plus, the shopper should not be restricted by which console they personal or the place they purchase their video games.
“And I’ll say, and this will appear too altruistic, I don’t know that [subsidizing is] rising the trade,” mentioned Spencer. “So I feel, what are the obstacles? What are the issues that create friction in at the moment’s world for creators and gamers? And the way can we be a part of opening up that mannequin?
“If I wish to play on a gaming PC, then I really feel like I’m extra a steady a part of a gaming ecosystem as an entire, versus [console], the place my gaming is form of sharded – to make use of a gaming time period – primarily based on these totally different closed ecosystems that I’ve to play throughout.”
In brief, Spencer believes a extra seamless gaming expertise could be potential if console and retailer obstacles did not exist.