Xbox boss Phil Spencer has explained that the company’s focus is on attracting “younger audiences”.
Over the past few months, Spencer has spoken at length about making Xbox-exclusive games available on “rival” platforms. Last weekend, while at the Game Developers Conference he spoke to Polygon about the possibility of an Xbox handheld console as well as having digital storefronts like Itch.io and the Epic Games Store available on Xbox, alongside their own store.
“This notion that Xbox can only be this one device that plugs into a television isn’t something we see in the Gen Z research because nothing else is like that for them,” he explained.
“Some of them will have an iPhone, some will have an Android, but all the games and everything is the same [for both of them]. All of their stuff is available wherever they want,” he continued. “So for Xbox, our brand pivot — as we attract and maintain relevance with a younger audience — is ‘Xbox is a place where I can find the great games I want to.’”
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He went on to say the console experience for many players is “sharded” due to the lack of cross-play with many games. “If I want to play on a gaming PC, then I feel like I’m [part of] a more continuous gaming ecosystem.”
