At E3 2018, Spencer has officially confirmed that the new Xbox consoles coming in future are going to support backwards compatibility.
At E3 2018, Phil Spencer has confirmed that Microsoft is currently working, in its research and development division, on new Xbox consoles to be released at an unspecified launch window.
It’s important that they shared this announcement in a moment where people were starting to wonder whether Microsoft was still interested in the console business or was shifting to a cloud-based environment, or even leaving the gaming business.
On top of that, during an interesting interview with Eurogamer, Spencer confirmed that – as stated previously – these new Xbox consoles will have backwards compatibility as a core principle.
“What I would say specifically, without announcing anything, is I’m very proud of our track record of compatibility and us respecting the purchase of games you’ve made with us and bringing that to the current generation,” Spencer said. “It is in our core on who we are.”
He added that, among other things, he’s not a fan of sequels. This is why Microsoft is still pushing on Minecraft as a platform and not as a single game ina series, and probably will do the same with Sea of Thieves and State of Decay 2.
“As you think about this next wave of hardware that eventually will come, so many of the large, large games people are playing today are still going to exist when the next hardware comes out. You’re not likely to see a ‘2’ after all those, as people are trying to move you to the next version of those games. In the old model of games shipping, getting played and then going away – and that was all of the games – a console transition was an easy step-function.
“We went through it with Minecraft. We didn’t ship Minecraft 2 on Xbox One to try to compel everybody to move to the next console, because that’s not what Minecraft players want. They just want Minecraft to get better. When you look at games like PUBG and Fortnite and you think about these large games and ecosystems that’ll be out there, when new hardware comes, people are still going to want to play those games, and it’s going to be important for us as platforms to support them.”
We’ll report more on this as soon as we have other information about the next Xbox.
Source: Eurogamer
Published: Jun 11, 2018 11:16 am