With around fifty games presented and “its biggest stand” ever held at Gamescom, Microsoft wants to reassure players after several complicated months, between studio closures, end of exclusivities and price increases.
“We run a business, and it’s absolutely true that within Microsoft, the bar is very high for us in terms of results,” Phil Spencer, the boss of Xbox, Microsoft’s video game entity, acknowledged on Wednesday in Cologne (western Germany), during a live event of the brand at Gamescom, the largest video game trade show in the world.
“The industry [du jeu vidéo] is under a lot of pressure. It has been growing for a long time and now people are looking for ways to grow,” he also said in defense of the American giant’s strategy.
Microsoft took many fans by surprise with the announcement Tuesday that its year-end blockbuster Indiana Jones and the Ancient Circleinitially planned as an exclusive to its consoles, was finally going to arrive in spring 2025 on Playstation 5, the machine of its competitor Sony.
A decision that confirms the movement initiated in February with the arrival of four of its games on rival consoles, marking a turning point in its strategy aimed at attracting players to its consoles with exclusive titles.
It is also a way to increase the profitability of its games, in the face of declining console sales.
“As gamers, we need to get used to the fact that there are going to be changes in the way games are created and distributed,” Spencer warned, adding that ultimately “games will be better and more people will be able to play them.”
“Bet”
After finalizing last October its giant acquisition ($69 billion) of game publisher Activision Blizzard, which has several huge multiplatform hits in its portfolio such as Call of Duty And Candy Crushthe American giant has suffered a series of disappointments.
First with the elimination in January of 1,900 jobs in its video game division, a direct consequence of the absorption of Activision Blizzard, then with the closure in May of four studios of the publisher Bethesda, which the American giant acquired in 2020 as part of a total investment of some 7.5 billion dollars.
The announcement of the arrival of the next Call of Duty: Black Ops 6the first in the series to be available on day one on Microsoft’s online gaming platform Game Pass, also coincided with a price increase for Microsoft’s online subscription service.
It had some 34 million subscribers at the end of February, still far from the target of 100 million customers that Microsoft wanted by 2030.
“Will this attract more players to Xbox? I think that’s their bet,” said Mat Piscatella, an analyst at US firm Circana.
According to him, the performance of Call of Duty on Game Pass should really decide the future of the formula and its viability.
“It’s constantly evolving, because the subscription market has not grown at the pace that some had predicted,” he added.
Microsoft also announced Wednesday that new versions of its consoles unveiled in June, which include an Xbox Series X without a Blu-ray drive, will be available starting October 15.
This could perhaps give the brand’s console sales a boost.