Xbox is known for releasing its games on Xbox console and PC, but there were three games this year that were only released on PC. According to the brand's boss, Phil Spencer, this is an anomaly, and not a desire to dedicate certain of its games to certain platforms only.
Xbox games exclusive to PC? It's not a wish, says boss Phil Spencer
Xbox was the first major publisher to focus on expanding the machines on which to play its games. Very quickly, Microsoft wanted to release its games on PC, well before PlayStation followed suit very recently. It was also Microsoft which launched Play Anywhere in 2016, allowing you to purchase a game once and be able to play it on both console and PC.
And yet, in 2024, three contents developed by Xbox studios have been exclusive to PC. We're talking about the World of Warcraft expansion, early access to Towerborne (only on Steam) and the release of Ara: History Untold in September.
Questioned on the subject by GameFile, who asked the boss of Xbox if it was a new standard to release certain games on PC and others on console, Phil Spencer confirmed that this was not a desire .
No, it's historic. There can always be anomalies, but I consider these three an anomaly.
We want our games to be playable on as many screens as possible. We think of the Xbox platform as the Xbox console, the PC and the cloud. We want all games to be playable on all these screens. We want them to be “Play Anywhere”.
The fact that the WoW expansion is only available on PC is because WoW was only released on PC, he explained. Towerborne is only available in early access on PC. For Ara, it was about “reducing the complexity” of a new team’s work on a new game. “I want the expectation that when we talk about a game, it will be available wherever our Xbox user is, including Play Anywhere.”he declared.
“I could even blame ourselves and say that it is not true that today, every piece of content that you buy on all of these [appareils] works on all platforms. I'm speaking to Rod Ferguson [producteur exécutif de la franchise Diablo] particularly regarding [l’extension Diablo IV] Vessel of Hatred. But we want to get to the point where when you buy [un jeu]whether on the cloud – which we are about to introduce -, on PC or on console, you own the content across the entire Xbox ecosystem. »
The principle of Play Anywhere is therefore far from being an old story and Xbox intends to continue to apply it to as many games as possible.
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