Xbox Series X Aren’t Held Back by Cross-Gen Development

Microsoft Studios developers are creating games that will work on both the Xbox One and the upcoming Xbox Series X consoles, however this won’t stop next-generation games from their potential success.

Xbox boss Phil Spector dismissed the idea that games will be “held back” by Microsoft’s development studios’ efforts to create games that are cross-gen between the two consoles.

Spector when on to make the analogy to PC game, saying that you have games that are powerful with the “highest fidelity” which will also “work across a set of hardware.”

“Frankly, held back is a meme that gets created by people who are too caught up in device competition,” Spencer said, during an interview with Gi.biz.

“I just look at Windows. It’s almost certain if the developer is building a Windows version of their game, then the most powerful and highest fidelity version is the PC version. You can even see that with some of our first-party console games going to PC, even from our competitors, that the richest version is the PC version. Yet the PC ecosystem is the most diverse when it comes to hardware, when you think about the CPUs and GPUs from years ago that are there.

“Yes, every developer is going to find a line and say that this is the hardware that I am going to support, but the diversity of hardware choice in PC has not held back the highest fidelity PC games on the market. The highest fidelity PC games rival anything that anybody has ever seen in video games. So this idea that developers don’t know how to build games, or game engines, or ecosystems, that work across a set of hardware… there’s a proof point in PC that shows that’s not the case.”

Spencer also pointed out, when discussing next-gen consoles, that better load times, fidelity, frame-rate, and input latency should be celebrated, but added that you cannot “exclude people from being able to play.”

Spencer said that Microsoft wants it’s customers to play it’s games on any device they wants, adding that players are at the center of the company’s strategy because gaming is “bigger than one device.”

“Our device is not the center of our strategy, our game is not the center of the strategy,” Spencer said. “We want to enable you to play the games you want to play with the friends you want to play with, on any device. On TV, the Xbox console is going to be the best way to play console games. Xbox Series X is the most powerful console out there and it will have absolutely the best versions of our console games. But that’s not to exclude other people from being able to play.

“Gaming is about entertainment and community and diversion and learning new stories and new perspectives, and I find it completely counter to what gaming is about to say that part of that is to lock people away from being able to experience those games” he added.

“Or to force someone to buy my specific device on the day that I want them to go buy it, in order to partake in what gaming is about.”

“Gaming is bigger than any one device, and that is something as an industry that we’ve embraced all up as we bring more and more players in. I think it’s vital to the role that gaming can play on the planet.”