Phil Spencer recently gave an interview with The Guardian where he spoke about the impact of single-player games today and the industry’s shift towards multiplayer experiences. When talking about how to keep narrative-driven experiences alive in times when service-based games and titles like Overwatch are growing more popular, Spencer said that it is a difficult business decision to make first-party titles along the lines of what are seen coming from Sony’s studios, who are doing a good job in that regard.
“The audience for those big story-driven games… I won’t say it isn’t as large, but they’re not as consistent. You’ll have things like Zelda or Horizon Zero Dawn that’ll come out, and they’ll do really well, but they don’t have the same impact that they used to have, because the big service-based games are capturing such a large amount of the audience. Sony’s first-party studios do a lot of these games, and they’re good at them, but outside of that, it’s difficult – they’re become more rare; it’s a difficult business decision for those teams, you’re fighting into more headwind.”
Spencer then went on to say that even though it is an uphill battle to create games like that, he enjoys story-based games and knows that they still play an important part in this industry.
“We’ve got to understand that if we enjoy those games, the business opportunity has to be there for them. I love story-based games. I just finished (LucasArts-inspired RPG) Thimbleweed Park – I thought it was a fantastic game. Inside was probably my game of last year. As an industry, I want to make sure both narrative-driven single-player games and service-based games have the opportunity to succeed. I think that’s critical for us.”
Although a lot of people, myself included, are yearning for more single-player and narrative-focused experiences, right now it is more lucrative to invest in multiplayer titles that will keep a solid player base for years with the proper support. Spencer believes that one solution to make developing narrative-driven games an easier commitment is by changing the method of their distribution.
“I’ve looked at things like Netflix and HBO, where great content has been created because there’s this subscription model. Shannon Loftis and I are thinking a lot about, well, could we put story-based games into the Xbox Game Pass business model because you have a subscription going? It would mean you wouldn’t have to deliver the whole game in one month; you could develop and deliver the game as it goes.”
Whatever the future holds for Xbox, we’ll be hearing more about the company’s plans at this year’s E3, where Project Scorpio will be unveiled and Xbox’s upcoming games lineup will be detailed. Microsoft’s press conference is scheduled for Sunday, June 11.
Jennifer is a games journalist, former games journalist and PR Manager at Gearbox. They contributed 234 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: went on to write for Windows Central and later managed PR for Gearbox Software.