Shortly after Microsoft CFO Tim Stuart said that the company is still interested in bringing Xbox Game Pass to a wide variety of devices, including PlayStation, Xbox CEO Phil Spencer stressed that his division has “no plans” for such a move. Spencer said that he is focused on innovating for consumers committed to the Xbox platform.
Is Xbox leadership at odds over the idea of Game Pass on PlayStation?
To recap Stuart’s recent statement, the executive said that Microsoft’s “mission is to bring our first-party experiences, our subscription services to every screen that can play games. That means smart TVs, that means mobile devices, that means what we would have thought of as competitors in the past like PlayStation and Nintendo.” Spencer, on the other hand, told Windows Central that there are no plans to bring Game Pass to either PlayStation or Nintendo.
As pointed out by The Verge’s Tom Warren, Spencer has previously said that “other competitive platforms” simply aren’t interested in allowing Game Pass on their hardware. This echoes what Microsoft said during its legal battle for the Activision Blizzard merger, i.e. Sony “blocked” Game Pass on PlayStation.
Reading between the lines, Spencer seems to be saying that there are currently no plans for Game Pass on rival platforms, and that’s because they won’t allow it. In the unlikely scenario of PlayStation or Nintendo reconsidering, Spencer’s stance may change.
