Xbox Boss Phil Spencer Talks About Microsoft's Mixed-Reality Future

Take the short view and the annual showcase of Microsoft E3 was a classic power play. The company unveiled its long-awaited Xbox One X, a console supercomputer capable of rendering native 4K images at higher frame rates and more stable than Sony's own PS4 Pro boutique.

But consider the longer point of view, as Phil Spencer should say, and what it means to play games becomes a much more bizarre mix of iterative concepts, a spiral propeller of creative-driven forces and trade that quickly converge on The dissolution of the boundaries between what we define as real and imaginary.

TIME spoke with Spencer about the company's current and future plans, including backward compatibility (the company announced original Xbox games soon for all Xbox One devices), the criticality of Xbox Live (its online gaming service), and Finally the calendar for general consumer adoption of mixed-reality products. This is what he told us.
Xbox One S and Xbox One X are the "ultimate" platform for Xbox 360 and original Xbox games

"More than half of our players have played a compatible game backwards," says Spencer. "We've seen things like when [Call of Duty] Black Ops 2 was released as backwards compatible game, it reached NPD's top 10 sales, and this is a game that is five years old. , Of course.I'm not saying that all backwards compatible games are played. "

"What I would say is that on Xbox One S and on Xbox One X, we are applying the performance capability of the hardware to the old games. So without the developer having to play anything, we are finding that games on any Xbox One S Or Xbox One X, work at a better frame rate and frankly because of the two televisions today, better levels of black and other things, you get a scene of greater fidelity.

"Certain developers are coming back and touching a few things. We did that with Phantom Dust and Voodoo Vince. Also native games will play better. This becomes the ultimate platform for those 360 games. They just play better. And we find that with the original games Xbox The same is true. We wrote the emulator in such a way that it takes advantage of the new hardware capabilities. So if the older game had problems of frame rate or other things, it will actually work better On today's console ".
"It is important that the artistic media live with us"

"The other thing that's important to me in backward compatibility is not the comment of Jim Ryan, Sony's global sales manager, on how things look. And I've said this before, but that's what I think, I see video games as an art form, "says Spencer. "I'm going to go back and I'm going to see Gone with the Wind, citizen Kane, I'm going to read The Lord of the Rings, I'm going to listen to the first Rolling Stones or Zeppelin albums. I think it's important that art media with Us , And we learn from it, and I think the games are the same. Not all games, like not all albums, is a perfect piece of art. But the fact that these games are still playable and are fundamental to much Of what we play today I think it's a good thing for us to keep close as an industry and to learn from. "

Minecraft was first released in 2009 and here we are eight years later and is bigger than Tetris. That has never been. I do not think it's good for games to become unplayable for technical reasons. It does not mean that everyone should replay every game, but I want those games to be accessible. And it's great that through Xbox One S and Xbox One X and our backward compatibility these consoles are proving to be the best place to play these things. "

"A good friend of mine, Ed Fries (former Microsoft vice president of game publishing), who used to run Xbox, is doing this with arcade. The old arcade consoles, obviously when they break, break, and how do you get back and Do you play Robotron? How do you come back and play those games? And you're buying consoles and putting them back together. You mentioned Criterion before, and I think the films are perfect. I mean, the coloring of films that I do not necessarily think is But if you have 16 by 9, if you can clean the color so people can see things, I think they are great additions, so I am a great believer in it.

Minecraft should always look like Minecraft

"I was a big part of the urge to go buy Minecraft," says Spencer. "And as a parent, when I think of the early interest in children by technology, and STEM, and we have added the coding capability of Minecraft, I believe the ability to create - now we are adding collaborative exchange through cross game In all Different platforms - I think it's a good mix of competition and cooperation I'm a big fan of the Lego company and the things they have been able to build, and I see that as the closest analogy. Relevant today as they began. "

"We are Minecraft curators, and the community owns Minecraft, so our job is to heal it in a thoughtful and deliberate way. Education is important, I love that we can show the Super Duper Graphics Pack and The 4K work that I It seemed fantastic, but for a lot of people they're going to love Minecraft the way Minecraft has always looked, and we've made sure Minecraft should look the way it is for people who want that. "

'Xbox Live is the most important asset we have'

"I've been at Microsoft for 29 years, I've seen the growth of this company and I know that Microsoft is looking for scalable and important opportunities," says Spencer. "Console is part of the opportunity in the games we see on Xbox.There is also not the whole opportunity.There are billions of players on the planet, more than $ 100 million in the business.You have people playing on the mobile, On the PC, on the console, virtual reality. The mixed reality is still small in terms of commitment, but there are new opportunities. And the game is of critical importance to the company due to participation. The players are voraciously playing content. They are the first to adopt the new technology, I think it's a really interesting thing for Microsoft to have in our back pocket, as we think about going to new places, the fact that Xbox can help and Minecraft can help. "

"So when I think of our strengths in the game, today's Xbox brand is iconic with console games. We're also Windows, like Microsoft, so we've put a big emphasis on Windows games and it's a great Addressable market we have 'Xbox Live is on iOS, it's on Android, we talk about cross-play with Switch, and it's obviously on PC and Xbox. "

'The best console players are the best players of all devices'

"When we think of console space, it's not the biggest segment in games away, but it's a critical segment of customers that's really important, and they love their games," says Spencer. "And the best players on the console are the best players on all the devices, they do not all see, but we see it in the data. So if you're a great console player, you're probably playing a lot of PC games, probably playing Many games on your mobile device, you are a player and want to play on all devices. "

"We are going to sell more S than next year X"

"The reason why Xbox One X was important to us is that we know that for the most demanding customer, they want the most loyal experience they can get. We will sell more S than we will X next year. Means in terms of hours of play, game purchases, the type of viral network that a person has with their friends and their community streaming ... this is a critical customer so we can maintain and grow. Millions of players on the planet, that most of those people are going to buy an Xbox One X. That's not the goal and it's never been the goal, we've always said it's a premium console. "

"Xbox One S in the console space will be our product of value. It's cool, it has Blu-Ray, 4K deluxe, it has HDR. We have millions of people entering Xbox Live through Android, they do not have any of our Devices and they come in.We have a lot of people coming through Windows, millions of people.That's why every three months Microsoft talks about Xbox Live MAU [monthly active users] as our game metric.However, our user base Active monthly on our network is the strategic asset we are trying to expand across all devices, whether the mixed reality, your iPhone or someone playing on an Xbox. "

The time scale in the mixed reality of consumption is 5 to 10 years

"I think we're 5 or 10 years away from a true untied device that's at a consumer price that has the fidelity of experience and the kind of usability you need to get to scale," says Spencer. "You can look at Gordon Gekko's mobile phone transition that I'm holding a shoebox on the side of my head on Wall Street, to what you have in your hand now. If you really look at the timeline of that, it's People think it happened overnight, but it did not. "

"I love that we made HoloLens, not because I think everyone should go and buy a $ 3,000 HoloLens. It was not made for everyone, we said, it's a developer kit. Now we're doing the other end with Windows Mixed Reality and $ 299 with OEM partners, but even so, with all these cables hanging from the back of the head, especially in a family environment, that's difficult. "

"I love the work that Sony is doing in this space, we have been great collaborators working and sharing, we have seen them to see the things of HoloLens, and they have been giving us demos.I think of HTC and Oculus.The community is much more cooperative That competitive, because we all realize that we are in the starting line, when the finish line can not be seen.I think to reach the real scale here, we are in that 5 to 10 years Horizon to reach untethered, Things that happen that I do not feel like I have a helmet in. But we have to go through transitions.Nobody can move fast, because we are going to learn so much from a creative What to do What you put on the screen? Hardware on the battery and other things that will be important. The console may have a role to play, but the commitment we have seen on the Windows side has been fantastic, and I think it has been the best accelerator for us . "

"I am a great believer in a metaverse future"

"Working in a company like Microsoft with Harry Shum (executive vice president of Artificial Intelligence and Research at Microsoft) and its Artificial Intelligence organization, you know, it's not a complete anomaly that Cortana [Cortana's personal intelligent assistant] A Halo character, "says Spencer. "Game audiences are the first to adopt new technologies, whether physical or representational, AI in games or 3D, games has always been an early consumer of these technologies because the players want these things. A player there. "

"I work a lot with [Microsoft's technical partner] Alex Kipman and Harry Shum when thinking about how games are combined in this space." I firmly believe in a metaverse future, where the volumetric world mingled with something similar to Xbox Live with AI Components that surround you, avatars and some of them from the real world, that's what we're really talking about. When we talk about that future of 5 Years, I think it's the space we have to land, where everything I interact with from creatures to People to objects around me, the world blends the real with the physical and the virtual, and the characters and the ability to IA do the same ".

"Our long-term incubations that are literally happening now are in this space of 'How do you see the next Xbox Live? How does this kind of metaverse or reality of mixed reality feel? And what does it mean when these things come together Unesdoc Ready Player One is kind of a cheesy version of that. " [Spencer headed Microsoft's E3 showcase wearing a black T-shirt with the image of an Xbox gamepad with the title 'Player (1)'.]

"But in our future roadmap, I think over several years, it's a great investment area for us and I love that game makers as well as game players can play such an important role here. A worker on the field. [Microsoft's corporate vice president and former Kinect creative director] Kudo Tsunoda is doing a lot of work there. It's something Microsoft should be involved in. It's on the same scale as Azure [the computing platform in Microsoft cloud And everything else, like mechanical learning, that we have running, and that's why I wear the shirt I used on stage. "