Gamereactor recently had a chat with Head of Xbox, Phil Spencer. During their lengthy interview, which I suggest you check out for yourself, the two talked about Microsoft's first-party offerings coming to non-Xbox console platforms. As you may expect, this includes the PC platform, where Microsoft has been doing really well these past couple of years with a renewed effort to embrace PC gaming.
Recently, Microsoft decided that if a first-party game is coming out from them, it will end up on Steam in addition to the Microsoft Store for Windows 10. The interview with Gamereactor shows that Phil Spencer is not about to go back on his company's efforts.
Spencer addressed this particular topic when asked if his stance on software on Xbox platforms (and Windows PC) changed over the years.
"If we are shipping a first-party game on PC it's coming to Steam and our own store.
"Like we built an expectation from our customers. That's my goal, and then there will be, as you said, maybe little anomalies every so often and because of relationships and certain developers that want to do certain things, but my goal is: make games as playable by as many people as possible so that this art form continues to grow. And I wanna be all in on the places where Xbox is, so a customer of those platforms can have an expectation that I'm gonna get to go play. And I feel good about the games that we are building, and I feel good about that on PC.
"You know if I rewind five years ago, I would say over and over, that we are committed to PC and then get a bunch of eye rolls, and rightfully so for we weren't doing much. But I think now when you look at what our standing is on Steam and Game Pass on PC, we have shown that our commitment over time has paid off. PC customers may or may not love what we do, but they know that when we are shipping things, we're gonna do our best effort on PC as well as on Xbox."
"Like we built an expectation from our customers. That's my goal, and then there will be, as you said, maybe little anomalies every so often and because of relationships and certain developers that want to do certain things, but my goal is: make games as playable by as many people as possible so that this art form continues to grow. And I wanna be all in on the places where Xbox is, so a customer of those platforms can have an expectation that I'm gonna get to go play. And I feel good about the games that we are building, and I feel good about that on PC.
"You know if I rewind five years ago, I would say over and over, that we are committed to PC and then get a bunch of eye rolls, and rightfully so for we weren't doing much. But I think now when you look at what our standing is on Steam and Game Pass on PC, we have shown that our commitment over time has paid off. PC customers may or may not love what we do, but they know that when we are shipping things, we're gonna do our best effort on PC as well as on Xbox."
Again, I suggest you check out the full interview because other topics include things like why Microsoft probably won't support Switch with first-party offerings, what Microsoft hopes to accomplish with their recent acquisition of ZeniMax, the possible expansion of Game Pass, xCloud gaming, and much more.
It's MUCH better now, i don't thank MS for that i thank Valve and Steam, the Windows Store and UWP might have had good intentions for support across platforms and cross play, but the implementation was bad and hasn't improved, turns out developers were more than capable of providing cross platform support themselves once the platform holders let them.
Fortunately i can say that chapter is over, but boy was it long and stupid.
Also Microsoft titles can be on EGS too right? I don't see the disadvantage of triple dipping.