Microsoft has been accused of dismissing its core audience by making the Xbox One a general entertainment system instead of a pure video game console. The announcements of Live TV and Kinect have left some worried that the company is not making exclusive games a priority.
To alleviate the fears Microsoft executives Don Mattrick and Patrick Spencer tell Official Xbox Magazine that they are spending big on Xbox exclusive games. The duo reports that Microsoft expects to spend at least $1 billion on Xbox One exclusives. President of the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft Don Mattrick says that reports of the Xbox One forgetting about the games are unfair. He believes that commentators are underestimating Microsoft.
"We just ran through our script and counted the number of exclusives, and looked at the amount of money that we're spending and the deals that we have exclusive windows and [things to create differentiation]. I think, candidly, people are way, way under-indexing how hard we're punching," says Mattrick.
"We're going to come out with detail on things and people are going to go, 'oh my god'. Like, 'they were focused; they made this a core goal, core activity'. There are great hits, there's innovation, and there are world class creators plugged in."
Microsoft is currently working with developers such as 343 Studios, Lionhead Studios and Turn 10 on exclusive titles. Turn 10 will be bringing Forza 5 at launch. 343 Studios is working on Halo 5 for a launch release. Lionshead Studios is also expected to be working on Fable 4 for the console.
Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Game Studios Patrick Spencer says Xbox One developers are jumping at the chance to use the console's added features to bring a wider variety of gameplay experiences to their titles. Spencer tells Official Xbox Magazine that the new console gives developers the chance to create games that have cross-platform experiences with features such as SmartGlass.
"I see our creators really taking that opportunity to think about their games in a more granular way. To still have the full immersive, quadruple-A experience on screen, but also think about how those experiences can roam with devices - and it's nice that our new box actually understands all this through the way it's structured, that people do multiple things at the same time, and I can have shorter gameplay sessions, longer game play sessions," says Spencer.