Xbox boss Phil Spencer has spent the past couple of days it seems bigging up Microsoft’s gaming potential on PC rather than that console thingy of his. After yesterday’s chat with PC Gamer that we featured on here relating to the all but confirmed news that Halo 6 would ship on PC, he’s today been talking and praising that little games platform on PC called Steam. You may have heard of it yourself…
This time however, Mr Spencer was having a good ol’ chin-wag with GameSpot’s sister site, Giant Bomb, during their E3 Livestream. And he kicked things off by talking about the unstoppable freight train which is, Steam.
“I look at Steam today, it’s on an incredible growth trajectory. It’s a massive force in gaming; a positive force. I think it will be bigger a year from now than it is today. And five years later it will still be bigger again,”
So far, so brown is his nose. I think it would take something rather drastic to stop Steam from growing, probably an asteroid or some kind of zombie-plague. Mr Spencer continued.
“I look at Valve as an important [independent software vendor] for us on Windows. They are a critical part of gaming’s success on Windows. I don’t think Valve’s hurt by not having our first-party games in their store right now. They’re doing incredible well. We will ship games on Steam again.”
And BOOM! That last sentence. From what he was saying at first, it was like he was saying “Steam are doing well, they don’t need our games, so we’re creating a PC store in the same vein as Steam and Origin and calling it Wire or something else as Microsofty for Gears of War and Halo and Excel.” But no, he didn’t say that. I did. He however did confirm – and there’s no 2 ways to take this – “We will ship games on Steam again.”
Although there is no confirmation on which games he is referring to, he did however later state his intention to build an Xbox Store on PC.
“I want to build a store; there’s no doubt about that,
Even though Microsoft’s PC game releases haven’t exactly blown the gaming world’s collective minds…
“They all haven’t gone swimmingly. Some of them have gone well,
“Forza 6 Apex did well. Quantum Break wasn’t our best PC release. Killer Instinct did well on PC. Gears of War Ultimate Edition was OK – we definitely learned there.”
I would think so far as Microsoft building their own store, it would more than likely be along the lines of Ubisoft’s uPlay – you can buy games on Steam, but they must be activated through uPlay as well. But that’s just my opinion!
What I actually care about, is what you think. And what you have to say, so let us know in the comments! Is it just good business for Microsoft to work closely with Steam? Would an Xbox Store on PC work? Let us know people!
