“Right now the focus is really on the content that we’re building,” he says. “I know I get some community pushback on our first-party [slate], and what position we’re in, and I want to say to people: that same level of commitment you felt from myself and from the team as we’ve evolved platform over the last three years – as we’ve evolved service over the last three years, as we’ve evolved and innovated hardware over the last three years – is going on with our first party. I don’t want to go and pre-announce a bunch of things, but we are upping our investment, there’s no doubt about that.”

“The audience for those big story-driven games... I won’t say it isn’t as large, but they’re not as consistent. You’ll have things like Zelda or Horizon Zero Dawn that’ll come out, and they’ll do really well, but they don’t have the same impact that they used to have, because the big service-based games are capturing such a large amount of the audience. Sony’s first-party studios do a lot of these games, and they’re good at them, but outside of that, it’s difficult – they’re become more rare; it’s a difficult business decision for those teams, you’re fighting into more headwind."

“But if I was playing a single-player story-based game and all of a sudden there was a paywall in the middle ... I mean, I’m old enough I remember horse armour, right? People had this view of, ‘Wait a minute, this is not that kind of game.’ We want to open up the opportunities for developers to do what they want to go do. But I also think we have to be able to support, as an industry, all kinds of games. I hear from gamers, ‘I don’t want microtransactions in all my games. I don’t want paywalls in all my games,’ and I think they’re absolutely in their right to voice their opinion. I do think there are models where that makes sense, and there are other models where it doesn’t.”

More here: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/27/xbox-chief-netflix-video-games-episodes-subscription-downloads-phil-spencer

I hope they up their investments in games, I was mad enough about him in the Xbox Empire thread today  

And I hope higher invstments doesn't only mean more money per game but more games. I mean, I have always enough to play even if they wouldn't release any game but for them it is pretty stupid what they did the last years with a few exceptions.

You should include something else in the title, for example: "Phil Spencer is promising bigger investments in first party studios"

.... he's always handing out statement and doing interviews, there's nothing special about that for it to be the title of the OP.

been saying it for years, nothing ever comes of it. wouldn't surprise me if they made some Gears or Halo spin-off instead of a new IP at this point.

I think this might be the same interview? http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=228020

Anyway, whether forced into bad decisions by Microsoft cutting back funding for Xbox or through his own bad instincts, Spencer is making Xbox less and less relevant to me, and I imagine many other video game enthusiasts.

Just make or recruit a lot of attractive, exclusive software. That's how Sony and Nintendo do it. Spencer even acknowledges the fact in the interview, citing Zelda and Horizon.

1. Did he just admit that Sony has a better first party output than they? Thats a first.

2. "and they’ll do really well, but they don’t have the same impact that they used to have" - this part is absolute, total bullshit and the reason why I dont invest in a Xonen and why the PS4 is wipeing the floors with the One. Their Netflix plan is waaay out of touch with what people want with a high-end home console and I do have a feeling this is the last milking strategy they might try before calling it quits.

How could they went from the 360 software output (a console that had one of the strongest library of games of any console ever) to the current state, I have no idea.

wtf is this guy talking about? he is making almost zero sense.

I believe you totally misunderstood a lot of what he said. He just said Sony is good at releasing story based single player experiences  (not that Sony is better then them in general) and that this is a  "genre" which isn't that big anymore if you look at the whole games market where revenue and playerbase of these games is super small compared to "service based games" where one single game can make more money as 50 story driven singleplayer games and which many people play very very long and invest again and again. 

Most third party studios invest a lot in these games for a reason. 

That's why he mentioned the armor in Oblivion, because to increase revenue they implemented that but it is super akward in a singleplayer game but in "service based games" it is super normal and common to implement such things with success and this shit can make a ton of money just because everyone wants to have better looking stuff as the other players have. 

That's pretty much what he said and it is absolutely true.

Doesn't change that console manufacturer don't only have to look at profit per game but also to offer these games which can sell millions but are still not big money makers because that also pushes console sales.

Everything he said makes sense. What not exactly?

Maybe he's paid per word spoken.  Or maybe he's just autistic.