Xbox Game Studios boss Craig Duncan has praised the company’s new direction of bringing its games to more platforms than just PC and Xbox. In a recent episode of the official Xbox podcast, Duncan spoke about how the move has been a good thing for both players as well as developers.
Duncan referred to the move as being a good one for its studios, since it allows their games to reach a larger audience than they would have had if they had been exclusive to Xbox consoles.
“Yeah, I think it’s good for gamers, I think it’s good for our studios,” Duncan said when asked how the move to multiplatform releases has worked out for Xbox Game Studios. “Our studios make amazing games, and we want to give those games the chance to reach the broadest audience possible.”
“Even if I think back to when I had my studio head of Sea of Thieves hat on, having to see if these reach their multiple platforms, being able to remove barriers so those players could play together. And then we announced Forza Horizon 5, which one of the biggest games on Xbox… I just think it’s good for gamers, it’s good to have our games reach more places.”
“I love that we can give that opportunity [for studios],” said Duncan.
Xbox boss Phil Spencer has also previously spoken about this move being quite successful for Microsoft. In an interview earlier this month, Spencer said that, rather than trying to bring PlayStation gamers to Xbox, the company is now focused on increased revenue in general thanks to its multiplatform releases.
“It’s maybe not what I was going to say on the stand at the time,” said Spencer. “But yeah, I would love to make all of the money for all the games we ship right, like, obviously, we make more on our own platform. It’s one of the reasons that investing in our own platform is important. But there are people, whether it’s their libraries on a PlayStation or Nintendo, whether it’s they like the controller better, they like the games that are there.”
Spencer also spoke about how the 70 percent of the money made from sales of Xbox games on PlayStation was being used to develop more titles. This refers to the standard 70-30 split for console game releases, where 30 percent of the game’s sale goes to the platform owner, while 70 percent goes to publishers and developers.
“And I don’t want to then look at that and say, well, there’s no way that we should be able to build a business there, find fans of our franchises there. I’m not trying to move them all over to Xbox anymore. People were all so invested in where our games are. Let’s allow more people to play, and yes, the 70% that we make on games on other platforms is helpful to us being able to build great portfolios like we showed at the Dev Direct, and I hope this will continue to show through the rest of the year.”
Microsoft is currently gearing up to bring its last major AAA release, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, to PS5. The title was released on PC and Xbox Series X/S back in December. For more details, check out our review.