Xbox’s Bright Future, and How We’ll Get There

Today, at Xbox Games Showcase and Starfield Direct, we showed the exciting future for players and game creators – dozens of new games, a new 1TB Series S console, and new ways for players to get their games anywhere with PC Game Pass coming to NVIDIA GeForce NOW later this year. The Head of Xbox spoke after our double feature. Phil SpencerHead of Xbox Creator’s Experience Sarah Bond. Head of Xbox Game Studios Matt BootyBethesda Game Studios is a game director. Todd Howard also addressed the future of gaming at Microsoft in our What’s Next For Gaming event.

Players are discovering and playing games like never before – we have reached new records for monthly active users and monthly active devices, and just last quarter we saw a 46% increase year over year in people playing PC games on Game Pass. Game Pass continues to grow – our revenue from subscriptions overall reached nearly $1 billion last quarter.

We’re excited about the future of Xbox, and we see the opportunity to grow not only our own business, but the entire industry as a whole – through creating groundbreaking new games, inviting creators to build their dream projects on our platform, and opening gaming up to everyone, no matter where they are in the world. Our key pillars for continued growth are:

Xbox users will receive new exclusives in all formats more consistently

Xbox has great content, and we know it. Our ambition is to release at least four first-party games a year- although we’ll also balance that out with careful consideration for each project’s needs. That’s on top of the work our teams are doing to grow our existing communities that we’ve fostered over many years like The Elder Scrolls online, Sea of Thieves (Madagascar), Minecraft, ForzaSo on. Our teams at Xbox Game Studios, Bethesda, and other studios have delivered 10 titles with more than 10 million users each, including new IPs such as Sea of ThievesThe following are some examples of how to get started: The GroundedFranchise entries such as Minecraft Legends Elder Scrolls Online. 

More than 150 millions monthly users are active on our first-party games. We’re committed to investing in new franchises, taking risks, and creating the most diverse line-up of games from any company in the industry – and the likes of Fable, Clockwork Revolution, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II and more represent the most ambitious line-up of games we’ve ever presented.

Of courseStarfield It’s one of those games. S, PC, and Steam – with Game Pass day one on Xbox, PC and Cloud – it’s our belief that|S, PC, and Steam – with Game Pass day one on Xbox, PC and Cloud – it’s our belief that StarfieldBethesda Game Studios’ title will soon be the most popular Bethesda Game Studios ever. Xbox has been Bethesda Game Studios’ main console development platform for a long time, and now that Bethesda is a part of the Xbox family, we’ve been able to support them more than ever – and it’s allowed the team to create the most ambitious game in the studio’s history, inside their first new universe for over 25 years.

Create with us in any size.

In today’s Showcase, we included [email protected] games like Dungeons Of HinterbergThe game was created by a husband and wife duo from Austria. Their debut title, which shared the Showcase stage with, is titled. Starfield.We support creators at all scales, allowing them to produce the games they wish to.

Our indie program, for example, offers multiple ways into the business and multiple pathways to success. Our indie program, [email protected]Over 5,000 artists in more than 100 countries have received over $4 billion from. Our new Developer Acceleration Program is helping to bring new, less-heard voices into the space – we’ve already helped to fund projects from 30 underrepresented developers and are in contact with 250 more.

Game Pass is a great way to access games that are played by thousands of people. One of Sarah Bond’s favorite notes coming out of the Showcase is that every one of the Game Pass titles featured this year comes from a creator that has previously released a game with Game Pass. We’ve also expanded PC Game pass to 46 more markets, bringing us to a total of 86, so game developers can reach millions of people in new countries.

There are currently more than 5,000 games in development for Xbox from developers across 100 countries – that’s more games in development from third parties than at any time in Xbox history. With this wellspring of games to come, our vision is to enable Xbox to offer the most diverse, easy-to-access line-up in the industry – you’re never far from finding your next favorite game.

Our goal is to make gaming available everywhere

In today’s Showcase we showed off Forza Motorsport, Starfield, South of Midnight, and more definitively next-gen games – titles that utilize the full power of the world’s most powerful console, Xbox Series X. Supply chain issues have now eased and we’ve been able to increase our supply globally making Xbox Series X easier to find than ever before, just in time for the line-up of exclusives we showed today to arrive.

Xbox Series S offers the cheapest way to get into next generation gaming, and opens up modern gaming to more people than ever. It’s a strategy that’s working – our data shows more than half of Series S buyers were new to the Xbox platform – and today we built on that strategy. We’ve heard your calls for more storage – with the new black Series S, we’ve introduced a version of the console with 1TB of space, perfect for those looking to build out a fuller library on their console. This console is set to hit the shelves of stores starting September 1. We’ve also recently worked with our partners at WD and Seagate to bring down the price of our expandable storage and introduce more size options for our plug-and-play solution.

We’re also making the Xbox console experience even faster and more user-friendly, working on an all-new Home User Experience. We’ve been testing our Insider Program for a few months and have refined it through Insider feedback, user research and Insider comments. In the next couple of months we plan to roll out a new look that is centered on discovery.

We announced today that Game Pass subscribers will be able stream selected PC games through Nvidia GeForce Now. This will enable the PC Game Pass catalog to be played on any device that GeForce NOW streams to, like low spec PCs, Macs, Chromebooks, mobile devices, TVs, and more, and we’ll be rolling this out in the months ahead. We’re excited by our future – to grow the industry, bring great new first-party titles every year, give partners more ways to deliver and access games and offer multiple ways to play all of them, wherever our players want to play. Looking forward to this adventure with our community.