Matt Booty: Release Platforms for First Party Xbox Content Is Directed by the Game's Developer

[Playstation Tablet 1,725]

GamesBeat: There seems to a belief that gamers will take advantage of these things once they’re there.

 

Booty: We see that. We wouldn’t be putting the work and energy into it if we didn’t feel it was good for the players. We have Xbox Live on Android, Xbox Live on iOS. We just know that gamers have phones. We know that people who have Xbox One also have a Switch. The thing that connects them all together is that they play a certain game.

A lot of folks have said, “What will you do about exclusives? Why don’t you make Forza cross-platform?” For us that’s about leaving it up to the game teams. Nobody knows their audience better than the teams. The Forza team wants to build a game that takes the best advantage of the Xbox. They’ll build a game that runs on Xbox. The Halo team will probably say the same thing, except they’ll say that on PC, what’s super important is the community of players. We think that where we can serve the best community and players is by also selling on Steam. With Minecraft, Minecraft has this core ethos that it’s everywhere, from a Kindle to an Apple TV, so we’ll go support all of these platforms. But that comes from the bottom up, from the teams, as opposed to me and Phil coming in and saying, “Do this.”

 

 

 

GamesBeat: If you were to make Halo more open, take it to more platforms, I’d still think that as a platform owner, you’re still doing all right, because the core of the social network playing that game is on Xbox. If you make it available on PlayStation or Steam, it’s not as everyone is going over there. You’ve already got the base of people supporting Xbox as a platform.

 

Booty: That’s part of the consideration, the management of a franchise, that all of our teams have to do. The decision to take Minecraft to Switch is a very different situation than, say, Forza going to Switch. That’s why a lot of people ask, “What’s your principle? What’s your cookbook? How does this work?” Every game is a little bit different. Disney is now going to decide how they get the X-Men back from Fox. Do they fold that into Marvel? Again, this gets into the interesting aspects of franchise management. How many Star Wars movies is too many? When should they come out? Should you do an animated series? These are all the same kinds of things that we start to think about around platforms and where things should go. It really comes down to case by case.

Sea of Thieves has done an amazing job of showing people how Game Pass can be a place to explore and find a new game. That game is built to be social at its core. We may have now said, “Okay, we have an established base inside Game Pass with this. Maybe it’s time for Sea of Thieves to go to Steam.” Players there who haven’t encountered it yet, because they’re not engaged with our storefront — if we put it on Steam they’ll have more people to play with. These are things we’re always thinking about with our franchises. What’s right for Sea of Thieves is probably different from what’s right for Forza.

 

 

 

 

 

And you thought Phil was bad.

Edited June 13, 2019 by Team 2019

[Playstation Tablet 1,725]

Ohh yeah and he semi confirmed Sea of Thieves for Steam, and Minecraft PS4 cross play it seems.

[102020393023445948594 2,223]

The cult of Spencer claims another victim.  Anyone from that hellhole in Seattle just turns into a pushover SJW loser over night. Must be something in the water over there.

[Hot Sauce 2,727]

Very surprised to see Matt call the Epic Game Store trash and Tim Sweeney a bitch, but it's hard to disagree with his points.

[Playstation Tablet 1,725]

At this rate Outer Worlds 2 will be multiplat. "We go where the players are". We don't want to disappoint our existing PlayStation fans ;(