It looks like Phil Spencer, head of Xbox, has admitted the obvious: the Xbox family of consoles have a weak first-party output. From games like Crackdown 3 and State of Decay 2 receiving negative or mediocre reception, to Forza and Gears recycling the same concepts over and over again, it looks like Spencer and crew are looking to turn things around.
It’s unclear whether or not this turn-around will start right now or with the thing billed as the Xbox Scarlet, but what is for sure is that Spencer has noticed the weak first-party line up of Xbox titles.
The website to report on this very action in consideration at the house of Xbox comes from wccftech.com, which sourced the following quote from a video interview on YouTube channel Fortune Magazine:
“Very few people turn on their Xbox to stare at the dashboard. People turn on their Xbox to go play games, and I think us having a strong first party Xbox means when I think about Xbox, I’m going to think about quality games. We have work to do there. We haven’t done our best work over the last few years with our first party output.”
In other words, Spencer admits that when thinking about a strong first-party Xbox means quality games and healthy output. And the system in question needs a lot of work from the team since they haven’t done their best over the last few years.
However it goes, if Spencer and crew want Xbox first-party games to increase in volume and quality and believe Crackdown 3 or State of Decay 2 are any indications of growth, then expect nothing new from this 180 turnaround.
Furthermore, WCCFTech says Spencer sees the growing importance of games-as-a-service with having a cloud infrastructure (Project xCloud) that allows players to keep playing titles across generations and devices.
So what can future Xbox owners look forward to as of now? Streaming, more games-as-a-service, and the release of more “quality” first-party games if Spencer’s words hold any value.