Microsoft is hard at work bringing the next iteration of the Xbox One to our living rooms, but Xbox Head Phil Spencer managed to make time to talk about whether developers are limited by the Xbox One when it comes to developing for Scorpio and what the future of Xbox looks like.
Gamasutra had the opportunity to sit down with Phil Spencer to talk about Microsoft's upcoming addition to the Xbox family, Project Scorpio, and the future of Xbox in general.
As far as Project Scorpio goes, we got a look at the dev kit for the upcoming console (above), in front of past dev kits, as well as a further explanation on how Microsoft is approaching development standards for the device. During the lengthy interview, Spencer made it clear that Xbox wants developers to support the "full Xbox One family."
Spencer detailed that developers are already targeting a range of devices when they develop for PC and that developing for Scorpio and the Xbox family isn't very different.
"But I do get the question, more from game players than game developers, on why won't you just let developers target only Scorpio. And aren't you holding them back. Like, that's usually the social question I get: aren't you holding the developer back by requiring they support Xbox One when they support Scorpio?
"Which is what we're going to require: you've got to support Xbox One, S, and Scorpio when you launch your game on Xbox One. But the truth is, the only developers that target one platform are first-party. Any other developer out there is building for the PS4, the PS4 Pro, the Xbox One, Scorpio, PC, probably Switch now, with the great start that they've had. And developers have learned how to craft their tools and their pipeline to support multiple capabilities as they go build those games."
"So…I'm a strong believer in console. And what that appliance means in my family room, under my TV. Like I think…I log in with a controller, it kind of has power options and auto-update options that just feel a lot more like my cable box than it does my laptop.
"I'm not saying one is better than the other, but that space of a console, you just turn it on and it's always ready and it's really purpose-built to go do one thing first, which is play games. Yes, people can do other things on it, but it's purpose-built for that. I'm a believer in that.
"And I've said, and this is actually true, the planning for what happens after Scorpio in the console space is already underway. You have to think about it that way. Like, what is the next thing? We — I — remain committed to the console space. We think it's critically important."
As for which other options they've considered, a game streaming "stick" is among the list of things they've considered:
"Well, let me say that the amount of times we've designed, roughly designed, an Xbox handheld, or a cheap Xbox kind of stick that you could plug in and stream from an Xbox in the home, or play low-powered games….we are always thinking and brainstorming on different scenarios of where the console could go. Or the gaming experience, I guess, more specifically, could go."
In the past, we have seen rumors of an all digital device for streaming and playing games… so maybe that's still on the horizon. Project Scorpio will be releasing later this year and has seen plenty praise, at least in terms of power. Spencer notes that
You can read the full interview at Gamasutra.
