Microsoft won’t be abandoning current Xbox One owners once the Xbox Series X releases later this year and is making sure that Microsoft first-party games will support both consoles for at least the next two years.
Xbox Games Studios head Matt Booty explained Microsoft’s upcoming release strategy in an interview with MCV. “As our content comes out over the next year, two years, all of our games, sort of like PC, will play up and down that family of devices,” said Booty. “We want to make sure that if someone invests in Xbox between now and [Series X] that they feel that they made a good investment and that we’re committed to them with content.”
However, Booty knows that their upcoming Microsoft first-party games such as Halo Infinite will be selling points for the Xbox Series X and said that their first-party releases will take full advantage of the more powerful hardware. “It’s the first time in over 15 years that we’ll have a Halo title launching in sync with a new console, and that team is definitely going to be doing things to take advantage of [Series X],” he explained.
In the interview, Booty also discussed Microsoft’s recent studio acquisitions such as Double Fine, Obsidian, Undead Labs, Ninja Theory, Compulsion, and Playground Games. He said it was a necessary phase they had to go through to bolster their software lineup and that they want to get to a point where they are putting out Microsoft first-party games every “three or four months.” Currently, they have to focus on making sure that each new developer acquisition is “onboarded correctly” and that they feel secure going forward.
As a result, Microsoft is slowing down in order to make sure it doesn’t acquire so many studios that it can’t effectively manage them. “If we’re always acquiring new things, there will always be somebody who’s the new person,” explained Booty. “You always have the the older studios and the newer studios, and what you don’t get in that situation is them treating each other as peers and sharing information or expertise.”
