Summary
CEO of Microsoft Gaming Phil Spencer has re-emphasized thatXboxis not gauging its success solely on the number of consoles that it sells. For several years now, it’s become increasingly apparent thatXbox’s business plan isn’t only focused on the number of consoles sold. This became most evident in 2016 during the Xbox One era, when Microsoft announced its Play Anywhere initiative, which allows gamers to buy a digital title on PC or Xbox and play it on either platform.
Many people wondered how Microsoft could expect to remain competitive in the gaming hardware market if it was no longer necessary to buy a console to play Xbox games. Andsales figures that show PS5 consistently outselling Xbox Series consolesare touted as a metric that Sony’s gaming ecosystem is more successful or popular than Microsoft’s.
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However, at Gamescom 2023, Phil Spencer has given a number of interviews, one of which explained Microsoft’s greater plan for Xbox as a brand. The critical metric for success, said Spencer, is how many people are playing and how much they are playing. In the fourth quarter of 2023,Xbox reported record numbers of monthly active users, along with impressive sales, and the quarterly number of hours people were playing via Xbox Game Pass rose by 22%.
Sony also seems to be acknowledging the importance of establishing a gaming ecosystem that isn’t limited to one or two consoles that become obsolete once the generation ends. The Japanese company is rejoining theportable gaming market with its PlayStation Portal handheldand, in recent years, has also been making a move onto PC. The PS3, PS4, and PS5 have a feature somewhat similar to Xbox’s Play Anywhere called Remote Play that allows the console to transmit a game’s audio and video to another device. Previously, this was limited to the PSP or Vita but now includes Android devices and PC.
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