Xbox haven't "done an A+ job" of "revisiting" our old franchises, says Phil Spencer

rockpapershotgun.com:

Back in the glorious Xbox One years, when every Microsoft executive was engaged in the act of putting one foot in their mouth while shooting it simultaneously, there was a giddy period of marketing conducted by means of Phil Spencer's T-shirts. He'd rock up on E3 stages like a cabaret dancer, touting tees with various new or elderly videogame licenses on them, and whipping older fans into a frenzy of speculation as to possible remakes or sequels. I myself had to go lie down after seeing Phil in a Phantom Dust shirt. Teaser-shirts, we should have called them. Look at him in the picture up there, showing off a chestful of Hexen. Shameless!

Sadly/happily, those halcyon days are behind us, but Phil still loves to dangle the carrot of an ancient IP now and then. Speaking on the Xbox podcast last night (while sporting a boring Halo championship jacket), he suggested that Microsoft could do more to revive their older franchises. Or at least "revisit" them in some fashion.

"I think we've done an OK job as Xbox, I don't think we've done an A+ job on looking at our franchises and revisiting them," Spencer said in the video. "It's always a trade-off between what do you do that's new and going back and doing something."

As is ever the case with Microsoft's discussion of their product strategy at present, the secret sauce here could be Game Pass - that magical subscription-based dimension in which new, old, uber-profitable and cultish licenses meet and lie down together, like animals in the garden of Eden. "I do think with Game Pass, we have the ability to maybe pick a couple of franchises every year and almost do a 'revisited'," Spencer said, swiftly adding "I just made up that term, so it's not a brand, it's not on a box."