Read from Kotaku:
“I think we’ll sell every unit of both of them that we can deliver,” he said, referring to this first holiday season. Microsoft isn’t releasing estimates of how many units they’ll ship of either device this year, but he expects them to go fast. “I think demand is just going to outstrip supply of pre-orders. For us and PlayStation, I think that the manufacturing supply chain is going to dictate [market] share more than anything else.”
And then?
“I think, over the generation, our expectation would be that price really matters and that you would see the Series S sell more,”
“Being honest, the Series S has surprised me in terms of how it performs,” he said, raving about its framerates and loading times. While Spencer didn’t share stats, one helpful reference point is Xbox Series S/X launch game The Falconeer. That game’s indie developer says it will run at 60fps in 1800p (not a typo) resolution on the Series S and at 60fps in 4K on the Series X.
And here’s a surprise: Spencer says some games load faster on his S than his X because they’re loading lower-res graphics.
There is nevertheless a real power difference between these two new Xboxes. That has worried some developers, who have cited the Series S’s deficiency in RAM—10GB to the X’s 16GB—as a hindrance to getting next-gen Xbox games to perform as well as the X’s specs should allow them to. I’ve heard from experienced developers who are split on this issue.
“I’m not worried,” Spencer said. “I think we have proof points, like we’ve said, on PC, that show that you can get absolutely amazing-looking games on great hardware and have those games scale to the hardware capability.”
He acknowledged the additional labor that is being put on developers to design for the S and X specs. “But absolutely, it is work. There’s no doubt about that. The fact that you have two performance specs now, I’m not going to stand here or try to PR somebody and say two different specs is the same as having one spec. It’s not. We’re doing this because we want to expand the market.”
Expanding the market is a reference to simply selling more next-gen consoles faster, because the machine doesn’t cost a full $500. Even Sony is dabbling with that, offering its new PS5 at $500 but also launching a $400 version that has the same specs but won’t have a disc drive. Microsoft’s approach is more radical. The company is gambling that the power cut isn’t as significant as the much lower price. In fact, Spencer said that the Series S could be an effective lure for lapsed Xbox 360 fans who may have skipped the Xbox One or even switched to PlayStation. Even if they go buy a PS5, he thinks the Series S might offer some appeal. “Maybe buying two $500 consoles is going to be a difficult thing, so we said, ‘Hey, let’s make sure we’ve got something to catch a second-[console] owner.’”
Spencer had said in previous interviews that existing deals involving ZeniMax games would still be honored, suggesting that something like the time-traveling game Deathloop would still come first to PS5, as previously announced. Beyond that, though, fans have wondered whether ZeniMax games would go Xbox and PC-only. In other words, they’ve wondered if PlayStation would stop getting Fallouts and miss out on the sequel to Skyrim.
“Is it possible to recoup a $7.5 billion investment if you don’t sell Elder Scrolls VI on the PlayStation?”.
“Yes,” Spencer quickly replied.
“I don’t want to be flip about that,” he added. “This deal was not done to take games away from another player base like that. Nowhere in the documentation that we put together was: ‘How do we keep other players from playing these games?’ We want more people to be able to play games, not fewer people to be able to go play games. But I’ll also say in the model—I’m just answering directly the question that you had—when I think about where people are going to be playing and the number of devices that we had, and we have xCloud and PC and Game Pass and our console base, I don’t have to go ship those games on any other platform other than the platforms that we support in order to kind of make the deal work for us. Whatever that means.”
I asked if Microsoft would consider offering Halo Infinite’s campaign at a different time than the multiplayer, if one is complete before the other.
“Bonnie [Ross, head of the Halo franchise] and the team will go drive those decisions,” Spencer said. “But I think we want to make sure people feel like they have a Halo experience. I think we can look at options like that.” He said any decisions like that would have to factor in the structure of the game and the story its telling. “So, yeah, I think that’s something to think about, but we want to make sure we do it right.”
“When we talk about a couple of years, it’s just when we look at the roadmap of games and the things that we’re building, that’s what we see. And so we’re just trying to be transparent with people about the roadmap of games that would be coming for last gen.”
He said that Series S/X users can run Xbox One games off of an attached harddrive, though they won’t benefit from the newer system’s SSD speed improvements. That’s one space-saving technique, though he conceded that the relatively limited storage on the new Xboxes and PlayStations was a likely trade-off in terms of offering speedier SSDs. Bigger drives would have made for more expensive machines. The cost of storage, he noted, will eventually come down.
“We have a very good relationship with Nintendo,” he told me. “And I think we see our work very synergistically, in terms of trying to grow the market. And it just makes it easy. Every conversation we have with them has really been easy.” He cited good conversations with Nintendo CEO Shuntaro Furukawa and Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser, who he said he spoke to last week.
“I think the root of that is getting gamers to trust in the motivations of why we’re in this business. And that’s the thing I thought we lost around the launch of Xbox One, [it] was people really questioning the why behind: ‘Why is Microsoft here?’”
That’s led to what Spencer says is a player-centric model, focusing on games and getting them played by as may people in as many places as they can. “Our goal now is putting the player at the center, building our services and our games around the player experience and making sure that they know we’re in the games business. We’re not in a different business. We don’t aspire to be in a different business. And this is something we’re incredibly committed to.”
“I think we’ll sell every unit of both of them that we can deliver,” he said, referring to this first holiday season. Microsoft isn’t releasing estimates of how many units they’ll ship of either device this year, but he expects them to go fast. “I think demand is just going to outstrip supply of pre-orders. For us and PlayStation, I think that the manufacturing supply chain is going to dictate [market] share more than anything else.”
And then?
“I think, over the generation, our expectation would be that price really matters and that you would see the Series S sell more,”
“Being honest, the Series S has surprised me in terms of how it performs,” he said, raving about its framerates and loading times. While Spencer didn’t share stats, one helpful reference point is Xbox Series S/X launch game The Falconeer. That game’s indie developer says it will run at 60fps in 1800p (not a typo) resolution on the Series S and at 60fps in 4K on the Series X.
And here’s a surprise: Spencer says some games load faster on his S than his X because they’re loading lower-res graphics.
There is nevertheless a real power difference between these two new Xboxes. That has worried some developers, who have cited the Series S’s deficiency in RAM—10GB to the X’s 16GB—as a hindrance to getting next-gen Xbox games to perform as well as the X’s specs should allow them to. I’ve heard from experienced developers who are split on this issue.
“I’m not worried,” Spencer said. “I think we have proof points, like we’ve said, on PC, that show that you can get absolutely amazing-looking games on great hardware and have those games scale to the hardware capability.”
He acknowledged the additional labor that is being put on developers to design for the S and X specs. “But absolutely, it is work. There’s no doubt about that. The fact that you have two performance specs now, I’m not going to stand here or try to PR somebody and say two different specs is the same as having one spec. It’s not. We’re doing this because we want to expand the market.”
Expanding the market is a reference to simply selling more next-gen consoles faster, because the machine doesn’t cost a full $500. Even Sony is dabbling with that, offering its new PS5 at $500 but also launching a $400 version that has the same specs but won’t have a disc drive. Microsoft’s approach is more radical. The company is gambling that the power cut isn’t as significant as the much lower price. In fact, Spencer said that the Series S could be an effective lure for lapsed Xbox 360 fans who may have skipped the Xbox One or even switched to PlayStation. Even if they go buy a PS5, he thinks the Series S might offer some appeal. “Maybe buying two $500 consoles is going to be a difficult thing, so we said, ‘Hey, let’s make sure we’ve got something to catch a second-[console] owner.’”
Spencer had said in previous interviews that existing deals involving ZeniMax games would still be honored, suggesting that something like the time-traveling game Deathloop would still come first to PS5, as previously announced. Beyond that, though, fans have wondered whether ZeniMax games would go Xbox and PC-only. In other words, they’ve wondered if PlayStation would stop getting Fallouts and miss out on the sequel to Skyrim.
“Is it possible to recoup a $7.5 billion investment if you don’t sell Elder Scrolls VI on the PlayStation?”.
“Yes,” Spencer quickly replied.
“I don’t want to be flip about that,” he added. “This deal was not done to take games away from another player base like that. Nowhere in the documentation that we put together was: ‘How do we keep other players from playing these games?’ We want more people to be able to play games, not fewer people to be able to go play games. But I’ll also say in the model—I’m just answering directly the question that you had—when I think about where people are going to be playing and the number of devices that we had, and we have xCloud and PC and Game Pass and our console base, I don’t have to go ship those games on any other platform other than the platforms that we support in order to kind of make the deal work for us. Whatever that means.”
I asked if Microsoft would consider offering Halo Infinite’s campaign at a different time than the multiplayer, if one is complete before the other.
“Bonnie [Ross, head of the Halo franchise] and the team will go drive those decisions,” Spencer said. “But I think we want to make sure people feel like they have a Halo experience. I think we can look at options like that.” He said any decisions like that would have to factor in the structure of the game and the story its telling. “So, yeah, I think that’s something to think about, but we want to make sure we do it right.”
“When we talk about a couple of years, it’s just when we look at the roadmap of games and the things that we’re building, that’s what we see. And so we’re just trying to be transparent with people about the roadmap of games that would be coming for last gen.”
He said that Series S/X users can run Xbox One games off of an attached harddrive, though they won’t benefit from the newer system’s SSD speed improvements. That’s one space-saving technique, though he conceded that the relatively limited storage on the new Xboxes and PlayStations was a likely trade-off in terms of offering speedier SSDs. Bigger drives would have made for more expensive machines. The cost of storage, he noted, will eventually come down.
“We have a very good relationship with Nintendo,” he told me. “And I think we see our work very synergistically, in terms of trying to grow the market. And it just makes it easy. Every conversation we have with them has really been easy.” He cited good conversations with Nintendo CEO Shuntaro Furukawa and Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser, who he said he spoke to last week.
“I think the root of that is getting gamers to trust in the motivations of why we’re in this business. And that’s the thing I thought we lost around the launch of Xbox One, [it] was people really questioning the why behind: ‘Why is Microsoft here?’”
That’s led to what Spencer says is a player-centric model, focusing on games and getting them played by as may people in as many places as they can. “Our goal now is putting the player at the center, building our services and our games around the player experience and making sure that they know we’re in the games business. We’re not in a different business. We don’t aspire to be in a different business. And this is something we’re incredibly committed to.”
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