Third-party storefronts could potentially be coming to Xbox
During a recent interview, Polygon asked Phil Spencer if he could “really see a future where stores like Itch.io and Epic Games existed on Xbox” — and whether it was “just a matter of figuring out mountains of paperwork to get there” — to which the Xbox boss replied, “Yes.”
“[Consider] our history as the Windows company. Nobody would blink twice if I said, ‘Hey, when you’re using a PC, you get to decide the type of experience you have [by picking where to buy games],” Spencer said. “There’s real value in that.”
We’ve already seen Microsoft take steps to extend its reach by launching some Xbox exclusives on rival platforms, but it seems Spencer also aims to lower barriers on Xbox as well. According to Spencer, exclusivity with games, and subsidizing consoles, isn’t as feasible now.
“[Subsidizing hardware] becomes more challenging in today’s world,” Spencer said. “And I will say, and this may seem too altruistic, I don’t know that it’s growing the industry. So I think, what are the barriers? What are the things that create friction in today’s world for creators and players? And how can we be part of opening up that model?”
“If I want to play on a gaming PC, then I feel like I’m more a continuous part of a gaming ecosystem as a whole,” Spencer later adds. “As opposed to [on console], my gaming is kind of sharded — to use a gaming term — based on these different closed ecosystems that I have to play across.”
Spencer has also recently commented on the growing popularity of handhelds, and while he hasn’t confirmed that an official Xbox handheld is on the way, he has said the Xbox hardware team has been exploring “different hardware form factors.”