Xbox Chief Opens Up on Mixer Failure

It has not been long since Microsoft shut down its streaming platform, Mixer, and decided to partner up with Facebook Gaming. Microsoft aimed at widening its community of gamers and Mixer was their means of achieving it. The platform failed to achieve the desired result even after having famous streamers partnering with it. As a result, the tech giants decided to take the platform down. Mixer will shut down on the 22nd of this month.

Phil Spencer, Microsoft’s head of gaming, opened up about the whole ordeal and what this means for the company. In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Spencer tells us what they are looking forward to in the future of gaming, at Microsoft.

Read more: Dr. Disrespect on Ninja and Shroud Future after Mixer Shut down

“I don’t have regrets.”– says the Xbox Head

Microsoft’s main focus is on cloud gaming and that is what it believes to be the future of gaming. The company aimed at gathering a community wide enough for its cloud gaming service, xCloud. Mixer was an effort to build one such community. Hopefully, Facebook Gaming will provide the desired platform.

About Mixer shutting down, Spencer says that he has no regrets.

“You make decisions with the best information you have at the time, you apply your best effort, and we’re in a creative industry. We are in a hits-driven industry… I think it’s fundamental to us that we’re not afraid of trying things that might not work. And that is just the art of making video games, and frankly game platforms.”

The Xbox head is pretty clear about his strategy with cloud gaming and building a large community. With a cloud service as big as Azure and a gaming community as big as Xbox Live, the company is looking forward to creating its own ecosystem of users through xCloud. On top of that, Microsoft has a massive collection of in-house content when it comes to games. However, what they need is a large enough social platform.

Read more: Is Mixer Dying Even with Shroud and Ninja?

“We need to be on all the places where people might want to go play”

Spencer says that right now the company aims at unifying the player base across platforms, and xCloud is their key to ensure that.

“We need to be on all the places where people might want to go play. And our xCloud strategy allows us to do that, where any place, any device that people might be able to play an Xbox game, we want to be able to deliver that.”

He goes on to add that geographically, the market for consoles and console games are constricted after a point. But with their cloud service, they will be able to cater to players across various platforms. Microsoft has its content front sorted out with an excellent collection of in-house titles. But now they will be able to cater to a larger consumer base with the same content with cloud gaming. This is their vision about the future of gaming.

“They (creators) just build the game that they were always just going to create on the platform that they’ve been building on for years, and yet find millions and millions of new customers. That is really exciting for the studios.”

Although Spencer has quite large visions for the future of Microsoft’s gaming, the fact remains that the shut down of Mixer did cost a lot of content creators their jobs. Let’s be honest, unlike Ninja and Shroud, not everyone got the best out of it. However, Facebook Gaming has assured a place for them on their platform. Let us see how that goes.