Just a couple days after Xbox chief financial officer Tim Stuart reiterated hopes to get Game Pass on competitor platforms like PlayStation and Nintendo, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has seemingly doubled back on that.
In a new interview with Windows Central, Spencer was asked about Stuart's comments at the Wells Fargo TMT Summit, in which the CFO said "our mission is to bring our first-party experiences [and] our subscription services to every screen that can play games." That includes, Stuart said, "what we would have thought of as competitors in the past like PlayStation and Nintendo."
"I'll start by saying we have no plans to bring Game Pass to PlayStation or Nintendo," Spencer responded bluntly in the new interview. "It's not in our plans."
Spencer went on to comment more about "what it means to own an Xbox" since, as Windows Central points out, many took Stuart's comments to indicate a focus less on hardware and more on subscription services and first-party titles.
"The thing I want to be focused on is how do we continue to innovate for people who've made the commitment to our hardware platform? And how do we continue to make sure that they feel great about their investment in what we've built," he said. "...I want us to continue to innovate, so people on our console feel like we're making investments in console that matches their commitment they're making to us."
Getting Game Pass on platforms beyond Xbox consoles and Windows PCs is a topic that's come up before, with Spencer calling it a "long-term goal" for Xbox in 2019 before doubling back on it a year later. In his recent comments, Stuart said the completion of the Activision Blizzard deal had made Microsoft want to expedite the process of making Game Pass available to everyone.
Elsewhere in the wide-ranging interview, Spencer teased Xbox achievements potentially getting some improvements, and shouted out Banjo-Kazooie while talking about bringing back older franchises.
Alex Stedman is a Senior News Editor with IGN, overseeing entertainment reporting. When she's not writing or editing, you can find her reading fantasy novels or playing Dungeons & Dragons.
