Xbox’s Phil Spencer says they are planning on reducing third party deals to focus on first party titles

Head of Xbox Phil Spencer spoke with China’s Gamecore during ChinaJoy convention this past week. In the interview he stated that moving forward, Xbox’s strategy is revolving around into investing on their first party line-up and signing fewer third party content deals.

My Strategy is more around our own first party franchises, and investing in franchises that we own, and probably fewer exclusive deals for third party content. I want to have strong third party relations, but paying for many third party exclusives isn’t our long term strategy.

This has been highlighted heavily this year; Sony has taken the Call of Duty DLC agreement for Black Ops 3, and at E3, Microsoft did not focus heavily on third party titles coming to Xbox One. Xbox has been highlighting their fall line-up as ‘the greatest games lineup in Xbox history,’ as the company now starts to focus on their first party titles.

They’re launching Halo 5: Guardians, Gears of War Ultimate Edition, Forza 6, Tomb Raider (console exclusive this year only, coming to PS4 holiday 2016), and more, and with that, they’re transitioning their focus to those titles, rather than relying on signing third party deals.

This year, the fact that we’re shipping Halo 5, Gears of War, Forza 6, Fable, we can only do that and build that best line-up we’ve ever seen really on the back of franchises that we own. It’s great to have Tomb Raider as part of our line-up, but investing in first party, you’ll see more of that at gamescom next week, is really core to our strategy.

Spencer stated that their continued focus on their first party line up will be highlighted at gamescom next week; Xbox’s conference takes place Tuesday, August 4th at 10AM EST. We will be covering the conference on @CIGamingNews on Twitter and all Halo 5 news on @HaloINTEL.

SOURCE: Gamescore via DualShocker