Phil Spencer Xbox Games Showcase Interview | The Official Xbox Podcast

Games in this podcast range from E to M. Hello everybody, welcome to the official Xbox podcast, the only podcast coming to you from inside Xbox, or outside of Summer Game Fest Play Days, where we are at the Fallout 76 Fishing Hole, or Fission Hole. Okay, we'll keep it. I'm Jeff Rubenstein, and along with someone who needs no introduction, Phil Spencer.

I feel really good. I think 2025 is an exciting year for us. Maybe I'll start for us as a team. I think our first-party teams have done amazing work so far this year. When you think about the launches that we've had, we're investing in a new form factor piece of hardware for us with our partners at ASUS, which means on our side we have a lot of design work that we did with them. We did a lot of operating system work that continues the Xbox experience on that. These are areas we're investing. I think Game Pass is having an amazing year. When I look at Xbox Play Anywhere and how much that's showing up in the show, there's so many things that are working for us right now. Our jobs inside the company is to run a good business. We're accountable to Microsoft for running a good business, a healthy business that continues to grow at both top line and bottom line. That's kind of a foundation for us, and what that does is it allows us to continue to invest in Xbox for our community of players and creators. That we're doing it does mean we have to make trade-offs through the year on things that we're going to invest more in, things that we're not going to invest as much in, because it is kind of the business that we are. But the business is having really good success. I even think to the last quarter and some of the stats that Satya Nadella, my boss, the CEO of Microsoft, and Amy Hood, the CFO, went through talking about how the business is growing. I'm just really proud of the scale of the Xbox business right now. It's obviously never been as big as it is now, and how it's really delivering for our players, our creators, and the company. That's a strong position, and I don't think our players have ever had so much to play in a given year. Just so far this year we've experienced Avowed, South of Midnight, Oblivion Remastered. We got to surprise everyone and just have an amazing time reliving that world. Doom: The Dark Ages, and then next month we're going to have Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 and 4, followed by Grounded 2, Gears of War Reloaded, Ninja Gaiden 4, Keeper, and it goes on and on. It's an incredible year. It's something we're as a player I'm certainly enjoying. But is this the plan playing out before our eyes?

Do we see that? Do you see the studios talking to each other and sharing expertise and things like that?

They are, they are. And you saw when they were talking about also in the Directs how they've leveraged other teams, they partnered with external teams. Capability that we've had as Xbox for a long time to allow them to increase their creative capability. So having Idos Montreal partner with us in building games allows them to up the output. Grounded 1 was one of those where the first one was like 12 people that built that game, and we knew we wanted to go bigger with Grounded 2. The mounts, the things that they've—I played a ton of Grounded 1. But Obsidian internally really has a culture of learning through shipping and growing and building on the successes that they have. I think Avowed was fantastic, and I thought The Outer Worlds 2 showed incredibly well in the show. Very cool that we get to play two games from them in like the next four months. It's great, really great. Looking forward to that. So I want to talk about inXile next. I was a big fan of Wasteland 3, put dozens of hours into it. There was so much flexibility and different ways you could change the outcome of the game with their decision-making. We knew that they're a strong team when it comes to writing. Then you see Clockwork Revolution, and I was reminded of the meme, 'I owe you an apology, I was not familiar with your game.' Did you know inXile could do this?

Awesome. Another team that kind of keeps us guessing all the time: Double Fine. From one game to the next, we were talking earlier like the team that made Stacking also made Massive Chalice. These are games that everything is completely original and feels like Keeper is going to be another one of those in the pantheon from Double Fine.

I love playing Fallout 76. I do have this issue that it's one of the games where I run around with my gamer tag in my head when I play the game, and the community is so inviting but I always end up with a big group of people around playing. But it's a really interesting point on how you balance the mix of new things in our show. These communities have millions and millions of players, and you want to be respectful of them and show the new content that's coming. The teams that do all the work on those franchises, I'm very proud of the success those teams have had in fostering and growing gaming communities around living games. It's not easy. You've had teams like Rare that this wasn't really in their background, and even when you watched at the launch of Sea of Thieves and now we're sitting here at Season 17, just an amazing accomplishment by that team and all they've learned and evolved and grew. It's another area where our teams share a lot of ideas and learning, because these are games that have a lot of players, the community is really strong, and we want to make sure we continue to support them. Something that you've been very vocal about over, I mean for many years, is just how important it is for you to ensure that Xbox players are enjoying the amazing games that come out of game creators in Japan. We saw a lot of that here in the Xbox Game Showcase. We want to run down through some of the games here. Ninja Gaiden 4, of course we got to see a pretty in-your-face list of 2025. We started the year obviously with Ninja Gaiden 2 the remaster. You just think about how Ninja Gaiden means so much to us on Xbox, and it was awesome seeing 4 in the show.

No, no, please, we're here to talk to you. So Square Enix, a great surprise drop of Final Fantasy 16, also the confirmation of Final Fantasy 7 Remake. That was fun watching the chat on that, a lot of OMGs. That was the most frequently seen thing. And even earlier in the week, during Jeff's show, we saw Final Fantasy Tactics is coming to Xbox. It's one of my favorite games of all time. Super excited. We did that for you. It was the—Jeff, don't think it didn't land. It was my birthday week and I was like, 'They knew, they love that.' And Persona 4 Revival. It feels like Persona and the Sega and Atlus team seem to have year after year really been showing up in our show. Game Pass is like the home of Persona these days. Also Metaphor: ReFantazio from Atlus was a big showstopper I want to say like two years ago and is now in Game Pass. Our relationship with the publishers that you're mentioning, whether it's the ones that are in our show, but even things like our relationship with Capcom. I got to sit here at Play Days and go through Resident Evil and see the new game. Scary, but amazing. In the history of video games, so many of our great franchises have come from Japan. The creator community there is very strong. I have a lot of friends there that have built games for years, and I always like going and listening to what they need from a platform. When they talk about here's what we need in order to see the growth that they're looking for, whether it's growth in creative or growth in the games that they're building. Going out on the road and spending time, two ears one mouth, I'm listening more than I'm talking on what they need from us. I think that's important, and gaining the trust. When a publisher decides to publish on our platform, to me it's really a sign of trust that they're going to treat their games the right way, that we're going to be a good partner for them, whether it's Game Pass or just a retail game on the platform, and helping them deliver what they need to deliver with their games. I love the support that we have. We're always there, getting on planes and going and having discussions. I go to TGS every year. These are important relationships for us to build, but I also hear from the Xbox community it's important to them, so it's important to me. You had mentioned stopping in and seeing Capcom yesterday. You actually—we were walking around and you got your hands on the sticks on quite a few games. You walked around with Matt Booty and Sarah Bond. Anything jump out at you that you got to see or even just walked by? There's a lot of games here at Play Days.

Yeah, it was really cool seeing the trailer for Mixtape in our showcase last year and then getting to see the actual game and getting the chance to play it. I was like, 'Oh no, this is what the game looks like.' That's right, and sounds like. I do think you can't—Mixtape in the soundtrack, I just talking to how they were picking—I won't unveil some of the tracks, but we were kind of riffing on some of our taste in music, and I think they really nailed it with Johnny Galvatron. That's right, very much a trip. We got to get him back on the show. Definitely one of the more gonzo interviews we've ever had on the—real thoughtful creator. When you talk to him about the game he's trying to build and the pacing and the flow and the emotion, it's just—you started this off, we're in the games industry. I think building an industry and platforms where games can be successful, supporting games in as many places that people want to go play, that's what this should all be about. I love that the shows here, I love that we're here, we're able to put on a show. It was a nice week: Summer Game Fest, Sony State of Play. I thought all of the shows had their unique and special takes, some great games to be shown. That's what this should be about: great games getting success, new and old. It's the signs of a healthy industry. So you mentioned still calling it E3. You're not the only one. I've probably watched every Xbox E3 press conference before I worked here, and then of course being involved in the last dozen of them or so. A few. And the trends stand out. I will note that it's been a long time since anyone rolled up their sleeve and there was a tattoo under it, so just for anyone keeping score at home, we're well overdue for something like that. That's a Peter thing only Peter can pull off. The trend that jumped out at me this year was the really front and center mentions of Xbox Play Anywhere in that program. We mentioned earlier this year there's over a thousand games that are Xbox Play Anywhere. It's something I avail myself of all the time. It's something that Final Fantasy 16, I'm going to be downloading it on my ROG Ally X and playing it on the way home. So I love that. I would like to just hear about the decision to make sure that was front and center in front of every new game that was shown in the showcase.

So let's talk about one of the ways that people are going to be very much looking forward to playing some of those games across platforms this year. It wouldn't be an interview with you if there wasn't something on the shelf. You've got this here, it's not quite as—it was right behind the fish so maybe nobody noticed it. That is the ROG Xbox Ally.

So one of the things that Sarah said during her segment where the ROG Xbox Ally was introduced was 'bringing together the power of Xbox and the freedom of Windows.' How are those teams working together to deliver that Xbox experience on what is a Windows device?

That's right, that's right. And it was—thank you. That was a good partnership to kind of feed them in and have them play a role in our hardware lineup. But it is really about playing the Windows games that you want to play. So if you're a big Roblox player, if you're a Fortnite player, if you're a Minecraft player, if you love Game Pass, we want to make sure the way you've built your library as a player and the games that you want to go play are available on this device and that they play incredibly well. So one of the things you hinted at, you had mentioned 25 years, and next year is the 25th anniversary of Xbox. You said something very notable at the end of your segment right before we got into Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, and that is that players everywhere are going to be celebrating the 25th anniversary of Xbox with games and experiences that have really been core to that Xbox experience for all of that time.

I think that's a great note to go out on. So we will end it there. If you want to put your mic down and pick up your fishing pole, I'm sure I'd be more than happy to see that. This actually marks the midway point in our week of deep dive episodes for the official Xbox podcast. You've heard from The Coalition, you've heard from Obsidian. Well, for the rest of the week you're going to hear from Obsidian again, and then we're actually going to get the deepest dive you've seen yet in Invincible Versus, the upcoming fighter based on that awesome and quite gory series. So make sure you tune in to youtube.com/xbox and look for the podcast tab, or search for the official Xbox podcast on Spotify or wherever you find your podcast. Phil, thanks so much for joining us here. I think there's really just no other way to wrap up this podcast, but we're casting. Okay, thank you. See you everybody, see you.