Xbox Game Studios will be putting a halt to acquiring new studios, at least for now. Xbox Game Studios has been acquiring teams at a sustained pace for a while now, adding many different projects to their portfolio. Matt Booty and Phil Spencer were onstage at X019 to reveal the future of the collaborative publishing and development effort.
“Recently we got all 15 of our studio heads together in New York City. They came together in a meeting, and it was a really humbling and inspiring experience for me to be with these 15 creative leaders that represent over 300 years of experience with game design and production,” Booty revealed, as part of a plan the company has to shift focus on developing existing talent and delivering quality games. Going forward, Xbox Game Studios will be focusing on “shifting our focus inside Xbox Game Studios from acquisition and growth to a phase of execution and delivery,” added Booty.
They also added that the brainpower and creative talent that Xbox Game Studios has collected has been rather impressive and inspiring to work with. “From Brian Fargo at InXile to Bonnie Ross, who runs Halo, to Tim Schafer at Double Fine, to Helen Chang who runs Minecraft… seeing these leaders come together to share ideas and expertise really gives me confidence going forward in what we’re doing.”
So with the deluge of news from X019 this year, there’s a pretty great stable of developers and library of games for the publisher to fall back on. I cannot wait to see what Xbox Game Studios comes out with in 2020 and beyond.
And speaking of the news from X019, there’s a ton of games coming that you want to pay attention to. For starters, Microsoft is adding more than 50 games to Xbox Game Pass in 2020, with a pretty great eye for quality. Sega has teamed up with Microsoft to bring several Yakuza games to the Xbox, and even Squre Enix has some fun coming in with the inclusion of multiple Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy titles.
