Xbox's Aaron Greenberg dishes on first-party investment, Japanese games

Every bit Gamescom 2022 continues to bombard the gaming globe with the latest trailers and announcements, Aaron Greenberg, the Marketing General Director for Microsoft's Xbox partitioning, sabbatum down with DualShockers to talk about the company's commitment to improving its first-party lineup and continued efforts to build relationships with Japanese developers.

On the topic of first-party titles, Microsoft made waves earlier in 2022, when it announced that information technology was calculation five new studios to its portfolio in a bid to bolster its beginning-party offerings. That signaled that the Xbox team was getting serious near reacting to player feedback, and information technology'southward only the start. In speaking with DualShockers, Greenberg stressed that the company is focused on stepping upwardly to the plate when it comes to growing its content.

It's an exciting time. While nosotros don't pre-denote things, I think y'all're seeing that the level of delivery is in that location, and that we believe in continuing to grow that content.

Know that the company is focused and investing to continuing to grow our content, and we're gonna exist bringing more and more games to our fans no matter what device they're playing on, and growing services like Xbox Game Pass.

Looking frontwards, Microsoft is leaning on these studios to bring more than diversity to its lineup, and more unmarried-role player experiences are a role of that program.

We beloved single player games. […] Information technology's something that nosotros absolutely believe in, and you're right. I think the thing near these studios that makes them unique is really first and foremost, they are incredibly talented developers that make actually high quality games. Most of these tend to be focused — If you lot think about Coercion, or Ninja Theory, or Undead — they're make games that are uniquely unlike from what nosotros're doing today in our first-party studios.

These games are different than Forza, or Halo, or Gears, or some of the franchises that people know us for. That'due south gonna add together to the diversity of the content.

One surface area where Xbox has been a niggling weak this generation is attracting 3rd-party titles from Japan. However, Greenberg says the Xbox team is stepping things up there as well, highlighting the time Microsoft gave to Japanese games on stage at E3 and Xbox lead Phil Spencer's engagement with Japanese developers.

I think our commitment and our support from Japanese developers has never been stronger, and nosotros wanna help them succeed on the global stage, and that continues to be our focus. Nosotros know our fans want those great Japanese games. That'due south why even some of the games we got later, we made certain that we showed them at E3, nosotros made sure we highlighted them so you know they matter to our fans.

Once again, we e'er take that lens of putting our fans first equally we think about content, and nosotros know Japanese content is important and that's why you see us grow our content, and we'll continue to focus on that.

These renewed efforts across Xbox come as gaming is condign an increasingly important office of Microsoft'southward business concern strategy. Phil Spencer at present reports directly to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella after his promotion to the visitor's senior leadership team last year. And in recent quarters, the Xbox division has seen impressive gains in revenue.

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