The American website Kotaku today published a long interview with the head of Microsoft'sGaming division Phil Spencer, pressing it on a series of topics dear not only to Xbox fans but to gamers in general. The most important is that relating to theacquisition of Bethesda and the fate of the relevant franchises:will they become exclusive Xbox or will they remain cross-platform?

The answer to this question may seem obvious, Microsoft has certainly not spent 7.5 billion dollars to leave everything as it is, but many in recent days have speculated that giving up an installed base as large as that of the PlayStation consoles and Nintendo would not allow the Redmond house to make the investment profitable. Journalist Sephen Totilo of Kotaku then asked Spencer, " is it possible to recover a$7.5 billion investment without selling The Elder Scrolls VI on PlayStation?"

The manager's response was a dry "yes".

Spencer then elaborated further explaining that the primary purpose of the acquisition was not to steal such famous titles from players on other platforms, as if somehow at Microsoft they had wondered " how do weprevent other players from playing these titles?" In fact, Microsoft's purpose is to expand the audience of these games, making more and more players enjoy them, but the model to achieve this is not to publish them to other flats, but rather to expand the Xbox ecosystem via xCloud, PC and Game Pass in addition of course to consoles. Spencer concludes this part of the interview with a very clear statement: "We must not sell on any other platform other than those we [nell'ecosistema Xbox, ndt] support, to make the acquisition work."

In short, it was obvious from the beginning but now it is even clearer that the acquisition of Bethesda aims to make titles such as The Elder Scrolls, DOOM, Starfield, Fallout and many others exclusive to the Xbox ecosystem, while making this ecosystem ever larger and more ubiquitous so as to greatly expand the park of players that this will touch.

And speaking of other platforms, the conversation then moved on to the Nintendo topic: will Microsoft continue to occasionally publish titles on the consoles of the big N, as it did with Ori and the Will of the Wisps? Spencer explains that he does not believe it is sustainable to continue to choose titles to be published on Switch, "it doesn't feel sustainable" to consider Xbox games on a case by case basis for Switch, stating that, to support this platform, he would like it to host the Xbox ecosystem with things like Xbox Live and the Game Pass. Of course we don't know what Nintendo thinks of this, but Spencer says that the two companies have excellent relationships: that a future of greater cooperation on this front is possible? After the news of the sale of a percentage of digital revenue to GameStop, we would not be surprised if Microsoft services could arrive on Nintendo platforms by selling a part of the revenue to the Japanese company.

Then returning to talk about home affairs, Spencer talked about Xbox Series S,the economical and completely digital next-gen console designed for those who do not need a 4K resolution, explaining that he predicts that, over the long distance, it will sell more than Xbox Series X thanks of course to its low price that can only fall further over the years. And there was also an interesting revelation: with some games, Xbox Series S even has faster uploads than Series X. This is because, going at lower resolution, it has to load lighter assets into memory, and therefore the uploads are faster.

There has also been talk of Xbox One: Kotaku asked if, in the future, it will be possible to play Xbox Series X titles on Xbox One via xCloud,and Spencer asked that it is something they would like to make possible, even if it is not very high in the list of priorities: it is a matter of time, but this possibility will also come.

What do you think of these statements? Microsoft's policy seems pretty clear and aims to expand the Xbox ecosystem more and more. Will they succeed?