Phil Spencer says Microsoft’s PC-heavy line-up this year is an 'anomaly,' so don't become accustomed to it.

Phil Spencer, Xbox's chief, has been on the interview circuit recently, mixing his usual advocacy of Microsoft's slate, with some more eyebrow raising claims: For example, after the bloodbath in jobs that followed the Activision Blizzard acquisition Microsoft is now looking for other acquisitions. Why stop at $69 billion when you can go further?

Microsoft has gained a lot of money in the PC market as a result of this deal. Big-hitters such as Blizzard, and fan favourite studios like Obsidian have joined existing developer-publishers Bethesda and id. This is a wealth of riches that no mega corporation can match.

Spencer knows this. He told Stephen Totilo, "WoW's The War Within is one of my favourite releases so far in the year, as part of Blizzard's longer-term efforts to right the ship." Spencer says, "I have to go back to World of Warcraft" because, "one, we have a new Blizzard leader [Johanna Faries] and the reintroduction of World of Warcraft to China has gone extremely well." Blizzard and NetEase renewed their partnership recently, allowing WoW to return to China following a temporary shutdown.

"And then having Chris Metzen back in the franchise. Being at BlizzCon, last year, watching him come out on the stage and announce the trio of the content, and just seeing the power of that brand. A brand that has been around for a very long time. They're surging on multiple fronts."

Spencer is bullish on Blizzard and who wouldn't like to have a feather in their cap like WoW, but he uses a strange word to describe Microsoft’s end-of-2024 slate which is PC-heavy. Totilo points to Spencer the fact that three of Microsoft’s nine releases during this period will be PC-only. (The War Within, Towerborne early access and Ara: History Untold) He asks if this is a normal thing for Microsoft.

"No," says Spencer. "This is historic." I think that these three anomalies are anomalous. We want to be able to play our games on as many screens as we can. We think of the Xbox platform as Xbox console, PC, and cloud. We want to play all games on all platforms. We want them to be Play Anywhere."

The Play Anywhere campaign is based on the idea that if you purchase a game from one of these platforms, it will be playable on them all. This is great for games like Avowed. It doesn't make sense with games like The War Within. WoW has always been PC-only.

"I could pick on us, and say that it's not accurate that, today, all of the content you purchase across all [devices] is available on all platforms. I'm talking to Rod Fergusson about [Diablo's] Vessel of Hatred. We want to get it to the point that, when you purchase, whether you are buying on cloud - which we're about to introduce - buying on PC or buying on console, "you own it across the entire Xbox ecosystem."