Xbox Chief Reveals Future of Gaming for Microsoft, But First, Xbox One X Maker Has to Show Console Some Love, Observers Note

Microsoft already has years worth of plans for the future of the Xbox ecosystem. However, there are also comments that the tech giant might first need to give Xbox One X the attention it deserves.

Since the release of the Xbox One X, it has been billed as the most powerful console on the market yet — and it actually is. Just the fact that it was built to run video games in native 4K shows that it surpasses what the PS4 Pro, its closest rival, can do.

However, Polygon commented that the lack of attention given to the Xbox One X was very evident during the entire Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) 2018 week.

The report said Microsoft failed to maximize some of the things where Sony cannot competes with them. And these include the sheer power of the Xbox One X and Microsoft’s deep bench of older games playable on the said console through backward compatibility.

While Microsoft is seemingly yet to realize the full marketability potential of the Xbox One X, the company’s gaming chief, Phil Spencer, has also revealed some of their biggest plans for the Xbox ecosystem in the near future.

The company is planning to continuously expand its Netflix-like Game Pass platform while introducing cloud-based gaming that will bring “console-gaming quality” titles to mobile devices.

For a $10 fee every month, Xbox Game Pass subscribers can download available titles and play them anytime. So far, over a hundred games have been added to the service, and Microsoft confirmed that all the titles they are going to publish will be available on the Game Pass as soon as they are officially released.

Spencer told Business Insider that they have observed that Game Pass subscribers tend to play more games than gamers who still purchase titles individually.

Spencer also revealed that they are working on bringing “console-quality gaming” even on mobile devices through cloud services. The Xbox chief said they are hoping to reach as many gaming customers as they can, even those who are limited by the devices they own.

He said, "There are 2 billion people who play video games on the planet today. We're not gonna sell 2 billion consoles. … Many of those people don't own a television, many have never owned a PC. For many people on the planet, the phone is their compute device.”

Spencer also noted that Microsoft's own cloud service, Azure, is key to achieving this plan, saying, "Fifty data centers in different parts of the planet? Billions of dollars of investment in building that out? It allows us to accelerate our growth in this space."