Today Xbox Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has responded to media speculation about the potential launch of Game Pass on PlayStation or Nintendo consoles.
The speculation was sparked by statements made by Xbox CFO Tim Stuart at the Wells Fargo TMT Summit, with many media outlets publishing headlines insinuating that Microsoft intends to bring the service to rival consoles.
Spencer clarified during an interview on Windows Central that no such plan exists.
Here's the full statement, in which Spencer also pledges to continue to look for ways to innovate across Microsoft's game portfolio and platform.
I'll start by saying we have no plans to bring Game Pass to PlayStation or Nintendo. It's not in our plans. But I think you hit on the right point of 'what it means to own an Xbox.' The thing I want to be focused on is how do we continue to innovate for people who've made the commitment to our hardware platform? And how do we continue to make sure that they feel great about their investment in what we've built.
I'm obviously going to have my own point of view on our hardware. But I think our hardware teams did a great job with the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S this generation, giving value and performance in the hardware line. When I think about investments in things like Game Pass, and Xbox Cloud Gaming, cross play, and cross save, and ID@Xbox, all of these things — I want us to continue to innovate, so people on our console feel like we're making investments in console that matches their commitment they're making to us.
Game Pass was one of the things you know that over the last five years we built, and we continue to grow, it's on PC, it's on cloud. It's an important part of the Xbox console identity. And I think it will continue to be that. And we will continue to look at future ways for us to innovate across our game portfolio and our platform.
You may be asking yourself why Xbox's CEO apparently contradicted a statement made by his own CFO, but that's not actually the case.
The problem is that, as usual, media outlets presented the apparently "juicy bit" in headlines without context, while also heavily paraphrasing to the point of Distorting what Stuart said.
Stuart didn't say that Microsoft intends to bring Game Pass to PlayStation and Nintendo.
As we reported in our own article (which did not mention this in the headline intentionally, as taken in context, it's nothing really groundbreaking), he said the following
Not announcing anything broadly here, but our mission is to bring our first-party experiences, our subscription services to every screen that can can play a game. That means smart TVs. That means mobile devices. That means what we would have thought as competitors in the past, like PlayStation and Nintendo. We're going to Nvidia's GeForce Now, their gaming subscription service.
[...]
But when we think about taking our business to these endpoints, again, it's that high-margin business to new gamers, that really Activision allows us to do in a much, I don't want to say easier way, but a much faster way to get there, versus trying to build on our own.
This is a much more complex discourse than simply "Microsoft wants to put Game Pass on PlayStation and Nintendo." Stuart mentions that Microsoft's mission is to bring its first-party experiences or subscription services to every device that can play games.
But he never said that the company plans to bring all of its first-party experiences and subscription services to all of these devices. As a matter of fact, he said the opposite, as Activision games, which are already on PlayStation and Switch, allow Microsoft to fulfill that plan faster, because it's already the current situation.
There is no implication that Game Pass is coming to PlayStation and Nintendo consoles because correctly paraphrasing Stuart's discourse in context, he's simply explaining that Activision games, which are already on PlayStation and Switch, give another existing endpoint on these consoles for Microsoft's high-margin first-party content, which would take much longer to build on their own.
Unfortunately, "juicy" headlines presented out of context creating misunderstandings is nothing new, and this is pretty much one of these cases.
If you'd like to read more about Xbox's performance, you read our article reporting Microsoft's latest financial results.
