Interview: Microsoft's Phil Spencer has a lot to say about Xbox's game line-up

Bullish on Blizzard / STALKER 2 as GOTY contender / Not as many PC-only games next time

Starfield: Shattered Space. Screenshot: Bethesda, ZeniMax

Microsoft gaming CEO Phil Spencer was in Manhattan this week, and he had some time in his schedule. Excellent. I wanted to talk about the company’s late-2024 gaming slate.

Spencer and I last spoke in February—about Xbox games going to PlayStation and Switch, about Microsoft’s gaming layoffs, about the future of disc drives on consoles. 

This conversation would be a bit different.

Yes, we could talk platform strategy again, but I wanted to talk games and find out the thinking behind one of the richer—and at times eyebrow-raising—gaming line-ups that Microsoft has produced in recent years.

So I downloaded an image to my phone that showed a grid of logos: 13 of the biggest upcoming games from Microsoft’s development teams and publishing group. Microsoft had posted it in August.

I hopped on a train to the city, sat down with Spencer at a hotel restaurant in midtown, loaded the image on my phone and slid it over to him to discuss.

We had plenty to talk about, so much so that I’ll be running this conversation in two parts.

In today’s, we cover:

• The surprising number of PC-only games from Microsoft this fall and why it’s an “anomaly” (his word)

• Microsoft’s delay of Avowed to 2025 — a window into how they’re pacing releases for Game Pass and using the time to polish games

• This season’s abundance of expansions — and some feedback he and Bethesda’s Todd Howard are chewing on about Starfield’s Shattered Space

• The company’s big plans with Play Anywhere, one recent release where they didn’t get that right, and the incoming support for buying games for the cloud

• The presence of STALKER 2 in the overall holiday line-up (and the absence of Black Myth: Wukong)

• And more…

I started with the easiest of requests: Please look at the image of all those upcoming releases and talk about a game that surprised you.

“Can I pick two?” Spencer asked.

Sure.