Microsoft is going to invest more in developing homemade games

The vice president of Microsoft’s games division and the head of the Xbox division, Phil Spencer, has said that Microsoft plans to put more money into developing titles that are made within its own doors.

Spencer wants to achieve this by opening its own game studios or acquiring existing development studios, he said in an interview with Bloomberg. He believes that Microsoft’s gaming division should grow and that its capacity to create content should be one of the company’s strengths. In addition, he acknowledges that Microsoft has not always invested the same amount of money in the development of self-produced games on this point.

Microsoft has actually scaled back investments in this in recent years; for example, the Lionhead and Danish Press Play studios were closed. The company has often been criticized for this policy, which would have contributed to the fact that relatively few major proprietary titles or games developed specifically for the Xbox were released compared to, for example, Sony and Nintendo.

The Xbox division is going to measure its own success more by the sales of games, subscriptions and related services. The sales of the consoles, such as the Xbox One X that comes out from Tuesday, will be less important in this regard. The number of monthly active users, streaming and e-sports will also become components that will become more important in the new strategy.

In the interview, Spencer also said Microsoft will likely introduce a new streaming service that doesn’t require an Xbox console in the next three years. This was already tested within the company in 2012, but it turned out to be too expensive. According to Spencer, the time may now be ripe for it, partly due to the further development of Azure.