Xbox Boss Throws Shade At 'Halo' PS5

Recently, there have been whispers that the popular title “Halo” will be released in Sony’s next-generation gaming console, the PlayStation 5. However, Xbox Chief Phil Spencer quickly abolished this speculation. Gamers could forget about seeing “Halo” releasing on PlayStation 5 because it could not offer the Xbox experience that players are looking for in those kinds of titles.

Xbox Chief Phil Spencer reveals that the studio has no plans of bringing the series to other formats through Microsoft Game Stack. PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch will not be able to provide gamers with the same Xbox experience that fans are looking for, the chief said. It can be recalled that Microsoft announced its Game Stack initiative earlier in 2019.

This project enables Microsoft to introduce Xbox Live support to other systems outside PC and Xbox One. However, this does not necessarily mean that Xbox will be stomping its feet on its rival gaming console systems. The initiative means that the Redmond tech titan will concentrate on its own gaming consoles, Project xCloud streaming service, and Windows PC instead of branching into rival gaming platforms like the next generation gaming console PlayStation 5 and Nintendo’s hybrid gaming console Switch.

For this year, the initiative has resulted in enhancements to parental control. It also improved the way in which text-based messages are filtered all through the Xbox Live service. Phil Spencer shared that those particular features are crucial in the total offering of Xbox.

In his interview with Stevivor, the Xbox chief said,

We have done some work on the Switch with Ori [and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition] and Cuphead… and Minecraft’s obviously there. But I’d say our strategy is really to think about the full Xbox experience; we want that whole Xbox experience to be amazing.

When you think about other hardware platforms, I’d want to think, holistically, is there an opportunity to bring all of Xbox there? And in most cases, the other partners probably aren’t that interested in the whole Xbox ecosystem coming onto their hardware.

Halo is such a great example — such an intrinsic part of Xbox. I don’t want to get into this world where we… pick apart [an IP] because then we lose the ability to build a cohesive experience. We lose the ability for those services to provide value… if we don’t have the full Xbox experience to bring to our customers.