I totally agree. There is no publisher acquisition coming for sure until next gen I guess. If Klobrille's chart that Ryuu posted a few pages ago is anything to go by, that would mean that currently XGS has 3-4K employees and ABK alone has 11K+. It will be a massive work integrating all these employees inside Microsoft gaming division, so I don't see any big acquisitions incoming anytime soon.

Nice, at least we xbros got something new from TGS.

――The first thing I would like to ask you is that you made a surprise appearance at the "Fan Festival 7 in Las Vegas" of "FINAL FANTASY XIV" held in July. I watched the stream from Japan and was happy that "Phil has finally fulfilled his promise!" When I asked the question in June, I felt a strong sense of enthusiasm, but I was really surprised that it would move the following month.

Phil Spencer: Hahahaha, it was actually easy for me to answer your question at E3 in June, since I had already decided to attend FanFest (laughs).

--I'm sure there was a lot of work involved in the development of the Xbox version.

Phil Spencer: We already had a business relationship with Square Enix, so it was just a matter of securing the time and development man-hours for Yoshi P. and his staff. That was resolved and we were able to present the project to the community.

--I have the impression that the distance between Square Enix and the Xbox has been growing over the past few years. Can we expect more major titles such as "Final Fantasy XVI," Mr. Yoshida's latest work, and "Final Fantasy VII REMAKE," which has yet to be developed, to be released on the Xbox in the future?

Phil Spencer: I can't mention specifics from Square Enix at this time, but we were able to announce a few things at the showcase, including "Octopath Traveler II. In Las Vegas, I was able to take the stage with the CEO of Square Enix and Mr. Yoshi P. and announce that we will be providing more support for Xbox, which I believe is important for me and the Xbox community.

--Personally, I was disappointed that there was no further news about Kojima's new work. When will there be a follow-up report?

Phil Spencer: I'm actually going to meet with Kojima-san next week when I visit the studio. I'm very much looking forward to meeting with him and finding out how the project is progressing. He thinks the project is going well so far. However, Kojima-san is an innovative game creator, and he is trying new things with this project, and I think he needs to work on realizing his vision out of the spotlight, so I don't want to ask him to go up on stage somehow. We should make sure that they have enough time to do so.

―My impression of this showcase is that it's good that more and more Japan titles are coming out on Xbox, but as an Xbox fan, what I expect from Xbox is not to do the same thing as PlayStation and Nintendo, but to create Japan AAA titles like "Lost Odyssey" and "Blue Dragon" as Xbox. Will it be difficult to meet this expectation?

Phil Spencer: No, it's not. You can count on it. In fact, last year we released "Hi-Fi RUSH. It was a small title, not as big as "Blue Dragon," but it should have been of high quality. Japanese game creators are also within Microsoft Game Studios, and although some titles cannot be announced yet, we are also working with Japanese manufacturers to develop new games. The development environment is growing, including first and third parties, so we can expect to see more Japanese titles in the future.

【インタビュー】Microsoft Gaming CEO フィル・スペンサー氏インタビュー - GAME Watch (impress.co.jp)

That 2nd photo is hilarious.

1.- Favourite game of all time?

- Sarah: GoldenEye

- Phil: Voodoo Vince

2.- Japanese game that they are looking forward to?

- Sarah: Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess (Capcom)

- Phil: Dragon's Dogma 2 (Capcom). A month ago he would have say Armored Core 6, in fact he had a chance to talk to Miyazaki-san about it and congratulate the team.

3.- Question to Phil, how does he get along with Todd Howard?

They have been friends for a long time. He says that Todd enjoyed a lot the experience with the fans during Gamescom. Maybe he'll go to TGS next year.

4.- How do they manage the day between family time and work time?

- Sarah: They use parental control quite often. Gaming is a reward to homework and other daily duties. They also like to play together because each one is good at something (puzzles, shooting or research).

- Phil: Gaming is a good way for them to be connected now that their daughters have their own life.

5.- Game series, first party or not, that they would like to see having a revival?

- Sarah: Not her personally, but she has been asked a lot about Starcraft during the week 👀

- Phil: The MechAssuault/Mechwarrior series, it was ahead of it's time and there is a lot about that franchise to do. They don't have a plan right now, therefore this is not a "leak" :p xD but it would nice to go back to it someday.

6.- Question from someone writing lots of reviews on the Xbox Store: there could be a way to make the reviews more visible for the user writing them?

Sarah says that thanks for all the feedback and that she'll share the suggestion with the team. Phil says that they look at the reviews and thanks the community for them.

7.- Are the console wraps coming to Japan? Are they coming to Xbox Series S too?

Yes, likely before the end of the year. Regarding the wraps for Series S, the different design means more extra work and they are thinking about how to do them too.

8.- Question to Sarah: the person asking loves her fashion and is wondering if it would be possible for all the Xbox fans to know what she is wearing to buy it xD

She likes fashion and tries to look for innovative ways to represent the Xbox brand through what she is wearing. For example, the green dress from the BAFTAs in 2022.

Phil says that they should think about a "Sarah's Gear" and he wants to highlight how no one asks him about fashion xD He says that t-shits are his fashion xD

And that was it!

Source: Idas

Lets highlight this part specifically, again.

Yeah, it is very strange indeed. While Xbox accounting for 21% of sales on a JP game might not scale all the way up from this niche title to AA JP titles that sell like 500k+ and AAA JP games that sell like 3m+, if Xbox can manage even 10% of total sales on those bigger JP games, 10% should be well over the break even threshold from the porting costs and well into profitability. So why then does it seem like so many JP devs/pubs go out of their way to skip Xbox releases?

Well, Bethesda Support finally responded after 2 days and told me that there is nothing they can do currently to fix my gamebreaking issue in Starfield because I'm on console (it seems on PC they can have a support agent go into your game data and try to fix a bugged playthrough, but they can't do that on console), so my only options are reverting to a save file from before the bug (losing like 50 hours of playtime in the process) or waiting on an eventual fix in a patch. Guess I'm waiting.

Going to jump back into Yakuza while I wait on the eventual Starfield patch that actually fixes my bug.

Yep I wouldn't roll back a week worth of progress either, Just move onto something else for now.

“Save often and in multiple slots”

The only technical obligations for MS/ABK are these ones:

Game Technical Support, Game Ports and Technical Work, and Platform Work: To provide reasonable technical support for the Activision Games (i) to the Purchaser and (ii) to any Sublicensees, provided that, in the case of Sublicensees, the Parties' reasonable costs are covered.

To port individual PC versions of Activision Games to a non-Windows PC platform for cloud streaming gameplay use at the written request of Purchaser.

To perform certain technical modifications of the Activision Games including to support emulators, such as Proton, which allow Activision Games to run on non-Windows operating systems at the request of Purchaser. For game ports and technical work, the Parties shall be permitted to charge Purchaser for the reasonable costs incurred.

Porting and technical work will be done at the Parties' regular pace for those categories of work and at a quality and standard which is customary in the gaming industry. The Parties are also required to provide Ubisoft with development and porting plans for the Activision Games reasonably in advance.

Idas

It'd be funny if Ubisoft ran their Cloud streaming via Azure.