Sarah Bond Talks About The Future of Xbox

In a recent interview with Dina Bass at the Bloomberg Technology Summit, Sarah Bond gave several insights into some Xbox decisions. She talked about the recent studio closures at Xbox, where she mostly dodged the questions, while later revealing that they’re launching an Xbox mobile store in July this year. What’s of interest to us here though, is that she also talked about various aspects of the future of Xbox, including upcoming hardware, cloud, and the multiplatform push.

After speaking about mobile gaming, Dina asks Sarah about Xbox’s cloud push and how the cloud market is faring compared to the rest of the industry.

Dina: “Another big discussion point in the ABK acquisition was cloud gaming, and how big that market really was. When will we really see it gain traction. How is it doing?”

Sarah: “…We’re seeing tremendous growth there. We have more demand than supply in that area, and you’ll see us rollingout more capacity, introducing more options for people to jump in and play on the cloud.”

Dina: “And is it growing faster than the overall market?”

Sarah: “It is, it is growing faster than the overall market, really bringing in new players and growth for us. So it’s an area where we’re investing more and are excited about.

After this, the conversation moves to Xbox’s multiplatform releases in the past few months.

Dina: “Earlier this year Xbox announced for the first time that it was bringing a slate of Xbox exclusive and developed games to rival platforms, to Sony’s Playstation and Nintendo’s Switch. That obviously was a big change and a little unsettling to Xbox hardware fans. How is it going? Do Playstation gamers really want to play Sea of Thieves?”

Sarah: “It’s early days, I don’t have anything specific to share, but we’re very encouraged by the reception of our games. One thing that I think is important to note. As Xbox we’ve been putting games on other platforms for a long time. Minecraft is available pretty much universally, the teams at Bethesda, ABK, have games on other platforms. It’s a decision we make on a game by game basis as we move forward and continue to execute on our strategy.”

Then the conversation moves towards the future of Xbox hardware, with Dina talking about how the Xbox faithful may be feeling a little down lately.

Dina: “Xbox itself’s heritage is in console. The energy around the console right now is a little challenged, many of the hardcore long-term consumers are worried, worried about the release on other platforms, worried that it may indicate that Xbox is defocusing on its own hardware. What do you say to them? How do you make them feel that Xbox is still for them?”

Sarah: “Yeah, at first the worry that I see is happening across the industry and I think that a lot of what we see is just industry all up. But specific to core gamers, my focus has really been on engineering and building that next-generation hardware experience that really, really, taps into their needs. I talked about this a little bit publically a few months ago, that our focus was on delivering the biggest leap ever. And that’s about really thinking through every aspect of what that hardware and what that experience delivers with the core gamer in mind. And that is about power and performance, absolutely a part of it.

“But it’s also about the ability to be able to play all of the games. I mean we have people who have been playing on Xbox for decades and have invested thousands and thousands of dollars and hours with us and being able to take all of those games with them into the hardware of the future. So one of the decisions made when I came in and became president of Xbox was to establish at team dedicated to that to game preservation and ensuring that future generations, future iterations, that you get to take those things with you forward.

“The next part of that is saying, okay I get to bring those games with me. I’m invested in those games, I get an incredible high performance experience on my console. But also continuing our commitment to make sure that gamers can bring their games with them wherever they want to play. That my xbox library is something that goes with me and that I can enjoy with others. So our long term commitment to cross-play is a part of that, and our commitment to cross-progression and cloud saves. So you can pick up on one device and and you can play on another. And also our investments on cloud gaming, a lot of those who use cloud gaming are people who own a console who just want to play on another device and go somewhere else.

“And the last piece is about game pass. We know our core users love game pass, game pass is a gaming subscription, you get a whole portfolio of games, but importantly you get every single one of the games we build day one in game pass. and the quality and the breadth of those games has only been going up over time. And you’re going to see some more really big games going into Game Pass later this year.”

Dina: “From Activision’s portfolio or?”

Sarah: “Across the whole slate, across the whole slate, you’re going to see some really amazing things. And keeping that as something that is really special for Xbox players is central to us.”

Dina goes on to ask Sarah about AI and how that may affect both gamers, game developers, and the future of Xbox. Keep an eye on this article as we update it with her answer.

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