Phil Spencer Flags Heavier Investment in First Party Games Over Third Party

Microsoft had a great E3 2015, and both critics and Xbox community loved it. Phil Spencer made an appearance at the event with some ground-breaking announcements such as “Xbox One backward compatibility” and showcased Xbox One games that will be releasing in 2015.

Xbox really are ratcheting up their exclusives to with Halo, Tomb Raider and Forza coming this holiday, and in just a few days we are going to hear more about Crackdown, Scalebound and Quantum Break.

It’s nice for a console maker to say that a specific Tomb Raider or Final Fantasy game is only for their system, but third party titles cost money. He said that although he wanted to have good relations with third party developers, he was not willing to spend much on getting exclusive third party contracts, but rather, wanted to invest that money in further first party franchises and new first party IPs for the long term.

Gamespot further adds that aside from “Quantume Break”, several video game titles are also going to be featured in Gamescom 2015, such as “Halo 5: Guardians“, “Rise of Tomb Raider“, “Fable Legends”, “Gears of War: Ultimate Edition” and “Forza Motorsport 6”.

“My strategy is more around our own first-party franchises, and investing in franchises that we own, and probably fewer exclusive deals for third-party content”, he said.

Microsoft’s strategy for Xbox will rely less on third-party exclusives and more on first-party content. Some of them will likely become cross-platform games unless Sony starts paying for more PS4-specific titles.