Xbox boss Phil Spencer has came out and commented that Microsoft hasn’t been consistently investing into first party games throughout the years. The company has faced quite of bit of criticism in the area of exclusive content. While speaking to Bloomberg, Spencer stated that the company is open to attaining additional studios or creating new ones altogether in order to increase the production of exclusive titles. “We need to grow, and I look forward to doing that,” Spencer explained.
“Our ability to go create content has to be one of our strengths. We haven’t always invested at the same level. We’ve gone through ups and downs in the investment.” Recently, Microsoft shutdown developer Lionhead and canceled their Xbox One and PC game Fable Legends. Microsoft also canceled another big title Scalebound, that was being developed by Platinum Games.Earlier this year Spencer said that the cancelation of these titles were a tough call, but that it would ultimately give Microsoft the ability and opportunity to “do some new and interesting things.”
“That meant we had to stop doing some other things in order to create room for that. And that’s just kind of the nature of running a business,” Spencer said. “One of the things that I wanted to do when I came into this job one of the things was our first-party and how I thought about needing to–this is an unfair word, but I’ll say ‘rework’ our first-party. Regretfully, that meant certain things that we were doing, I thought we needed to do something different. It meant getting back to what I think is a core and building from that.”
Xbox executive and general manager of the first party games team recently stated that Microsoft’s current lineup for 2017 exclusives is looking pretty solid and teased that the company has more new game announcements coming next year.