The Big Phil Spencer Gamescom Interview: Starfield, Baldur's Gate 3, Mid-Gen Upgrades, and More

Over the last year, Xbox has been under one massive spotlight: a giant acquisition and court case, questions about its upcoming AAA portfolio, Starfield on the horizon, Game Pass, and so much more. At gamescom 2023, we were finally able to get some answers from Xbox head Phil Spencer about almost everything.

[Jin_Sakai]

“Spencer Forza Motorsport is a GAAS with years of support“

More live service crap. They just never learn.

“Forza MS mp Framerate is Locked on PC to match Xbox Series S and X“

This will go over well.

[anast]

Ouch

[MrBaskerville]

Meaning locked to match Series S, just said in nicer words.

[JEECE]

But of course, if you release a multiplayer game that isn't a live service, gamers dogpile you for "lack of support" or "abandoning" the game. Look at how people are reacting to COD's announcement this year: they are mad because they think there should have just been a longer cycle of DLC and content updates for MW2, instead of a new release this year. They'll never admit it or use these terms, but the criticism they are making is that is being treated more like a traditional multiplayer game and less like a live service.

[Plague-Doctor27]

I mean FIFA, Madden, 2K all are live service games that last a year until the next release comes out and wipes all the money you already spent down the drain. A small group will complain but these franchises are breaking profit records every year. COD isn't any different

[purple101]

People are pissed about the cod situation because there were rumours Activision would have a 1 year break for developers to start-a-new. Thus mw2 would have 2 years support of dlc instead of normal 1 year.

This could have convinced some people to buy it (although it would have sold well anyway) then mw3 drops out of nowhere.

[JEECE]

@purple101

That's exactly what I mean. People wanted more content updates to MW2 for an extended period of time; in other words, they wanted MW2 to be operated as a live service.

This is the criticism people make of multiplayer games all the time. They want more content updates for a longer period of time, which is literally a live service. They just don't want to use the term live service.

[Lightning77]

I guess your favorite will never learn since they're going LS. Or is that different some how?

[Jin_Sakai]

Yes it’s different because Sony actually puts out plenty of great single player games regardless. Starfield might turn out to be an amazing SP game but we’ll see.

[Sonic1881]

It feels like Microsoft just don't get it 🤔

[Extermin8or3_]

Ofc it is, need games that keep people subscribed to games pass. Expect most of their titles to have GAAS features. That said if it's like gt7 which is technically GAAS then it'll barely be noticeable.

[Jin_Sakai]

“Phil Spencer Confirms 'Plan' For Four First-Party Xbox Games a Year“

So basically rush out four awful live service games a year.

[isarai]

Why TF would you lock the frame rate on a PC game?

[solideagle]

according to him it will give competitive edge to PC gamer. I am not very technical, so I don't know if higher frame rate gives edge in esports or not

[Si-Fly]

It absolutely does so you’re bang on. As a sim racer I totally get this decision, it’s the right one if they’re going to be pushing the esports side of things with this title, nice level playing field.

[blacktiger]

First Person Shooter thats a huge ass difference!!!!!!!!!

[isarai]

@Si-Fly

What about people playing casually or offline?

[Jin_Sakai]

“It absolutely does so you’re bang on. As a sim racer I totally get this decision, it’s the right one if they’re going to be pushing the esports side of things with this title, nice level playing field.“

No it doesn’t. A fighting game or FPS yes not so much a racing game as it’s not twitch based. And others shouldn’t suffer for Series S.

[ocelot07]

Reason 6 billion why I hate this clown. Cancer of the industry.

[Andrew336]

Grow up.

[Si-Fly]

N4G is unbearable these days, I need to break the habit of reading comments loll.

[ocelot07]

Why? Because I don't praise or kiss this guy's backside? Because I don't approve everything he does?

[Othegamer5]

you got 6 billion reasons you hate this guy you need a life. who cares that much about someone they dont know. get help

[ocelot07]

If you take the 6 billion comment seriously rather than take it as a bit of sarcasm I believe it's your self that needs the help.

Just so I don't hurt your feelings any further here is my none sarcastic statement.

I don't like Phill Spencer.

Now I hope that makes you somehwat feel better.

[Rockstar]

Good guy Phil!

[Stanjara]

Garbage man.

[purple101]

Can't have mid generation console anymore because it fragments market, developers struggle choosing a target platform.

Errrrr . 1: youndun that already
2. Adjust sliders. :)

[jznrpg]

If they just did Series X and a Pro later it would be fine.

But they F’d up big time making the base model (Series S) a last gen capable machine and a pro model being similar to PS5’s base model at launch.

They can’t add a third model now making their best selling machine that much further behind in power.

Xbox makes bad decisions almost every gen.
360 they rushed out and didn’t have basic quality control measures in to get out first and RROD and ditched games halfway because they were making money on Kinect.
Xbox One they focused on Kinect and added a bottleneck of ESRAM so their machine was super weak.

And now the Series S is holding back the Series X and prevents them from making a “pro” model.
They just don’t make good decisions too often and that’s not even talking about games.

[purple101]

Here's another gem

"don't see a world where we drop S. In terms of parity, I don't think you've heard from us or Larian, that this was about parity. I think that's more that the community is talking about it. There are features that ship on X today that do not ship on S, even from our own games, like ray-tracing that works on X, it's not on S in certain games. So for an S customer, they spent roughly half what the X customer bought, they understand that it's not going to run the same way.

But 2 years ago.

He promised exact same features, exact same experience one in 4k60 and one in 1080p sometimes 1440p.

Silders right?

[ChiefofLoliPolice]

Framerate for Forza locked on PC to match the consoles. Ohhhhh that's gotta hurt....fail. And Starfield being 30 fps on both consoles even the X?... Epic Fail.