Microsoft’s Phil Spencer Acquiring Studios for Social, Casual Games

Reported by Bloomberg, While speaking in an interview at the Paley International Council Summit, Chief of Microsoft’s XBOX division, Phil Spencer mentioned that he has been looking to acquire game studios for the development of more Social, Casual titles akin to games like Fortnite and Minecraft.

“When I think about the kinds of genres that are usually associated with Xbox, yes, we have Roblox, we have Minecraft, we have FIFA and Fortnite, but we want to continue to invest in more social, casual content that’s out there,” Says Phil Spencer. 

Phil Spencer has been monumental with the current growth of the XBOX platform, bringing a newfound(at the time) focus towards developing actual games for XBOX instead of focusing on other entertainment services serving to provide experiences other than games. Over the past few years the company has spent up $10 Billion in acquiring various studios around the world, including but not limited to, the entirety of ZeniMax, Double Fine Games, Obsidian Entertainment, Ninja Theory etc. 

Speaking about the risks of such an aggressive approach, Phil Spencer said, “Part of creating a studio is the idea that at some point I’ll be able to financially exit and realize the risks that I took and see the benefit of that,” he continues saying, “It’s a two-sided economy of creators starting new teams, taking risks doing new things, seeing that to completion, and then those studios becoming part of something bigger.”

Phil Spencer has also made major waves in bringing a new, more broader appeal into the industry with the XBOX Game Pass. While still a fairly new service, the XBOX Game Pass is the closest thing that people have to a “Netflix for Games”

And personally, it is safe to say that considering how things are right now, the acquisitions have paid out wonderfully for Microsoft with massive hits like Arkane Studios Deathloop, Double Fine’s Psychonauts 2 and most recently Forza Horizon 5. The company has a whole host of heavy hitters on the way as well with the recently announced Fable 4, The Outer Worlds 2, Obsidian’s Fantasy RPG “Avowed” and many more.

Following that, the launch of the XBOX Series X/S has been an impressive success for Microsoft with an estimate of over 8 million units sold. Game Pass has also been a monumental success with an estimate of over 20 million subscribers. 

Its going to be very exciting to follow the companies future from and there hasn’t been a better time to be an XBOX owner than today.