Xbox Is More Focused On Player Engagement Than Console Sales, Says Phil Spencer

We've heard on numerous occasions over the past year about how Xbox isn't solely reliant on console sales anymore, and head of Xbox Phil Spencer talked a little bit about this as part of yesterday's IGN Unlocked 500 podcast.

Spencer mentioned this while talking about how Xbox Game Pass measures its levels of success, highlighting that the "number one" metric that the Xbox team pays attention to these days is levels of player engagement.

"What we do is say, are we growing the number of players on our platform, and are they playing more often? And from that activity, we see the business grows. The number one metric that we can look at to see if our business is actually growing, is are people playing more on the platform?"

"There's nothing about review scores, there's nothing about retail sales of consoles or retail sales of games. The number one sign that our platform is healthy and growing is actually engagement on the platform from players, and that is what Xbox Game Pass is growing. So, our business continues to grow and continues to be profitable at Xbox, and we're very proud of that."

Of course, retail console and game sales are still a big part of player engagement, but given that Xbox also has a major PC and cloud presence these days, it makes sense that Xbox is no longer reliant on just console sales for success.

And with the likes of Xbox Game Pass (and eventually Xbox Cloud Gaming) available on last-gen Xbox One consoles as well, Microsoft has plenty of ways to drive engagement for those who never even upgrade to the Xbox Series X or S.

What do you think of Spencer's comments about player engagement? Tell us down in the comments below.

[source youtube.com]