Xbox Head Phil Spencer Reacts To Stadia, Teases What's To Come In Leaked Email

Google kicked off the 2019 Games Developers Conference in fashion On Tuesday with the reveal of their new streaming service, Stadia. There is still plenty of questions around when it will launch or how well it will work, but it appears one major force in the games industry is happy with this announcement.

In a report from Thurrott, an email was leaked from Xbox head Phil Spencer that points to a similar plan for the Electronic Entertainment Expo in June.

“Their announcement is validation of the path we embarked on two years ago,” Spencer said in the email. What he is referencing is Xbox Game Pass, the games streaming service available to play well over 100 games.

He continued, “Today we saw a big tech competitor enter the gaming market, and frame the necessary ingredients for success as Content, Community and Cloud.”

In breaking down the announcement, Spencer didn’t appear shocked by what Google revealed. It had been an open secret in some manner after running tests on their Project Yeti streaming platform in 2018 and hiring notable members of the games industry like Jade Raymond.

He continued in the email, “There were no big surprises in their announcement although I was impressed by their leveraging of YouTube, the use of Google Assistant and the new WiFi controller.”

Microsoft isn’t far behind when it comes to a streaming service akin to Stadia, either. Project xCloud, which looks to be Microsoft’s answer to Google, is entering public trials this year.

And Spencer wasn’t coy about the coming months. He said “there has been really good work to get us to the position where we are poised to compete for 2 billion gamers across the planet. Google went big today and we have a couple of months until E3 when we will go big.”