The head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, recently added more fuel to the growing uncertainty of single player games' future on Xbox. After confirming his well known stance that the "games as a service" model is the future for Xbox, Spencer moved on to explain why backward compatibility was really brought for. It appears that the popularly requested feature was not delivered to Xbox fans solely to please their request. Backward compatibility might be filling a hole left by the lack of single player exclusives being made. In a recent interview, Phil said the following,
One of the things I worry about – and I've talked about it a little bit – are the single-player story-driven games. It's hard when so much of the gameplay that happens on a daily basis is on these games that are long and growing and service-based, and then you get a smaller single-player game and what… how does it find its audience when so many hours are taken up?
Be sure to check out Phil Spencer's interview just below to further appreciate the direction he is taking Xbox to.
What do our readers think about Xbox abandoning single player games in favor of the "games as a service" model? Let us know below.
Jacob Preston
Wow, this guy is going to drive the xbox brand into the ground.
Single Player games on Playstation get great sales, xbox just need some good studios to make great single player experiences as they hardly have any first party studios.
raga
Let me translate for Phil: single-player games don’t give us enough money to pay for our efforts of making them. It could also be the case with Sony.
But Sony was built on these single-player experiences (Metal Gear Solid, God of War, Persona, etc…). Microsoft, on the other hand, is known for games like Halo, Gears of War, etc… which are mainly multiplayer experiences (aka “service-based” model).
While I understand its not Microsoft’s forte, I’m surprised they are giving up on them when their competitors push those types of games a lot.
Andres Fernandez
They clearly give up. They won’t ever win a console generation if they throw the towel with single player games. PlayStation will remain the best place to play because it will have both worlds while Xbox increasingly only one
Andres Fernandez
I agree. Microsoft should have at least the same number of studios at Sony. I don’t see why not if they really wanted to compete. Instead they have less than half of what Sony has.