Xbox Executive Aaron Greenberg Talks New Studio Acquisitions
Xbox has always lagged behind its top competitor when it comes to exclusives for the platform. With Sony turning out big first-party launches like God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, Spider-Man, Ni No Kuni 2, Street Fighter 5, Persona 5, and many more, Microsoft has a lot of catching up to do in securing big-name titles for its platform. Head of Xbox Phil Spencer acknowledged this shortcoming and talked about five big studios they acquired during their E3 2018 press conference.
The five studios recently acquired were Undead Labs (State of Decay), Playground Games (Forza Horizon), Ninja Theory (Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice), Compulsion Games (We Happy Few), and a new Santa Monica studio headed by former Crystal Dynamics folks called The Initiative. Aaron Greenburg, GM of Marketing for Xbox, talked to MCV during Gamescom and said:
We were really deliberate in that we wanted to grow our investment in our first-party studios…And we were really thoughtful about how we wanted to do that.”
Greenburg’s comments about deliberately choosing certain studios might go beyond just what kind of games they’d make. Sony’s partnerships with studios like Guerrilla Games and Naughty Dog have not only produced some amazing titles in the past ten or so years, they’ve also advanced graphics and engine tech on consoles beyond feasibility. Perhaps partnerships with studios like Playground can be used to leverage the cool weather tech from Forza Horizon 4? Or, perhaps the audio team from Ninja Theory can pitch in on another Xbox exclusive? We’ll just have to see what kind of fruit these acquisitions will bear, for now. We only have a little bit of speculation that Playground is making the new Fable, but not even that has been set in stone.
Are you excited to see what kind of new exclusives Xbox is cooking up? Be sure to follow our Twitter for any updates regarding new first-party Xbox titles and check out these other awesome stories from the rest of the Don’t Feed The Gamers staff:
Colin Regan239 Posts
Colin is a freelance writer for DFTG with previous bylines at other media outlets such as Twinfinite.
