For those that are continually worrying about the future of Xbox hardware, be it a new console, or a handheld, or some sort of console-like PC, further reassurances are at hand (unless you work in video game media, the ‘Xbox Dead’ schtick is a click-driven goldmine!). In a new, wide ranging interview with Future Magazine on YouTube, Xbox President Sarah Bond shared a pretty affirmative statment – ‘Hardware is absolutely core to everything that we do at Xbox‘.
In a new interview with Future Magazine, Ruth Umoh talks with Xbox President Sarah Bond, in an conversation spanning her career journey and of course, Xbox. After discussing Xbox President Sarah Bond’s early days at McKinsey and T-Mobile, why she worked in consulting and how she ended up at Xbox, they talked about some other interesting subjects.
Ruth and Sarah talked about the ‘resistance’ seen towards the current changes at Xbox and in the broader industry, with Sarah admitting ‘Changing it is hard’. They also talked about innovation and Xbox Play Anywhere, where Sarah revealed that Xbox Play Anywhere users spend ‘20% more time’ playing games.
During the interview, Ruth asked how Sarah thinks about the future of hardware, as Xbox moves towards this ‘play anywhere’ approach. “Hardware is absolutely core to everything that we do at Xbox because we know that our most valuable players, the people who love Xbox, love the hardware experience.” said Xbox President Sarah Bond.
“And so that is why we are working on our next-generation hardware. It’s going to be a powerful experience and one that also enables people to take their library with them. And that’s what’s really important here as well, is that we know that while people wanna play their library absolutely on the console, they also wanna be able to play it on PC or stream it around the cloud. And so the Xbox experience starts with the console, but then gives something to people that they can experience across all screens if they choose to, bringing their library, their community, their identity, and the store with them everywhere they go.“
As much as the media-side of this industry seems to really push back on the whole premise, I think there are a lot of people that do value being able to play wherever the hell they want. Look at the reaction to the Steam Machine – though also, if the Steam Machine is a console, why isn’t the ROG Xbox Ally an Xbox?
You tell me on that one!
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