Corporate VP Phil Spencer says the mobile market is “great for home consoles”; Microsoft would only release Halo FPS on mobile if it was “great.”
Xbox One maker Microsoft has brushed aside the notion that the mobile market of smartphones and tablets is eating away at the traditional console business.
“I think mobile is great for home consoles,” Microsoft Studios corporate vice president Phil Spencer told GameSpot in a new interview. “It creates more gamers. I think playing on televisions is a special experience and I love playing on my phone as well.”
Spencer pointed to Skulls of the Shogun–which was released simultaneously across the Xbox 360, Windows Phone, and Windows–as an example of how mobile can work successfully in tandem with consoles.
“I can play Skulls of the Shogun across any screen and my save game is in the cloud and transfers to any device. So I can actually progress through that experience whether I’m sitting there playing on my phone, on my tablet, or on my Xbox 360,” Spencer said. “And I feel like I’m playing one instance of the game across all those screens.”
Spencer said these kinds of cross-platform experiences are something Microsoft is going to invest in more heavily going forward.
“I think you’re going to see more and more of that out of games that we’ve announced and things that we haven’t announced yet,” Spencer said, pointing out that next-generation games Fable Legends and The Division will allow for play on consoles as well as mobiles.
Microsoft brought one of its tentpole franchises–Halo–to mobile earlier this year through the top-down third-person shooter Halo: Spartan Assault. Spencer said this game–the first entry in the series designed for touch controls–has been received well, but made clear that Microsoft isn’t gearing up to release a Halo first-person shooter on mobiles anytime soon.
“I want it to be native to the control that works. So we obviously did Halo: Spartan Assault on Windows and it’s doing really well. That first-person shooter control that I love with a controller in my hand on my console…I’ve yet to see a perfect adaptation in a touch experience. And I don’t want to create Halo FPS on touch just to say I did it, to check a box. I want to make sure it’s great.”
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