With Team Xbox embarking on a major multiplatform push these days, there's been some concern in the community that without focusing on first-party exclusives, Xbox may essentially lose part of its identity and appeal in the process.
This was brought up in Phil Spencer's couple of interview appearances last week, with both Gamertag Radio and Destin Legarie taking slightly different angles on pretty much the same question. As you can see below, the former questioned why Xbox hardware will remain important if exclusives become less of a priority in 2025 and beyond.
In response, Spencer explained that it's the work going into hardware that will drive the appeal, with the team working across everything from consoles to handhelds and Xbox Cloud Gaming to provide the best possible experience.
Gamertag Radio: "There is concern in the community about - well, you're putting all these games on other platforms, why would I still want an Xbox? What is going to be the reason for me to want Xbox hardware when I can get that experience on another platform?"
Phil Spencer: "I want people to pick hardware based on the capabilities of that hardware and how that fits into the choices that they want to make about how they want to play. And we want our hardware to win based on the hardware capabilities that we have.
I think the difference that we've seen in the last 20 years - and I think this is good because I've come from building games - is it's really game-first, not platform-first. Most of the games you and I will talk about run across so many different platforms. And those are the games that are having success, those are the games that are top of the charts when you look at the most played, most successful games. And I want to build a platform that services those creators.
[As for] our own hardware, I think it's fundamental to what Xbox is. In the position I'm in, I look at hardware as a critical part of what we do, but not trying to gatekeep the games off of other places for the benefit of [us]. Let's go build innovative hardware that people want to use to play, whether that's in their hands, whether that's on their television, or even other places."
In Destin's interview, he directly asked about concerns surrounding Xbox "losing its identity", with Spencer suggesting that it's actually an "evolution of our identity" by trying to make games as accessible as possible in the future. He also advised that the industry as a whole needs to adopt this mentality in order to keep delivering great games.
Destin: Some fans are a little concerned about Xbox losing its identity maybe, what would you say to address those concerns for long-time fans?
Phil Spencer: "I think our identity will continue to evolve, which it frankly always has, but when I hear concerns, I hear concerns about 'is my library of games safe, am I still going to be able to play the games?' and I think over the years, I'm proud of the commitment we've shown to respecting purchases on our platform through back compat, through Xbox Play Anywhere, through crossplay - things that we've done to enable people to continue to play, so I hear that."
"I see the investments we're making in platform and how we want Xbox to show up in multiple places and your library to be available there... this is all about making sure that your library of games that you own on Xbox are playable in multiple places, so I'd say it's an evolution of our identity, but I believe it's an identity that this industry needs.
When you think about where this industry is now, and you see the business challenges for many companies - for us to keep making games more accessible to more people has just got to be front and center for us as an industry, so we continue to see great games that we've seen over the years."
As we've already covered here at Pure Xbox, Spencer spoke more in these interviews about how hardware remains a "critical" part of Xbox and how his team will continue to ship more games on PlayStation and beyond in the future.
There's obviously controversy that surrounds all this, particularly when it comes to exclusives (which Spencer didn't actually mention in the quotes above), but clearly Microsoft feels that the multiplatform approach makes best sense not only from a monetary perspective, but also from an industry one. We'll see how it shakes out.