Xbox boss Phil Spencer says he is disappointed by the shutdown of Mixer, but has no regrets about the company’s investment in the project.
Mixer was Microsoft’s response to live streaming services like Twitch. It started life as a service called Beam, which focused on interactive streaming, and was acquired by Microsoft two years later. Despite the significant investment in the acquisition of high-profile streamers, Microsoft announced that it will shut down the service last month and move its efforts to Facebook Gaming.
“Obviously it’s a disappointment when you try to grow something to the scale it needs to get there and you don’t succeed,” says Spencer. GamesIndustry.biz.
“I do not regret it. You make decisions with the best information you have at that moment, you apply your best effort and we are in a creative industry. We are in an industry driven by successes. And if we enter this space that we are afraid of being disappointed that we will not achieve what we are trying to achieve as an organization … I think it is essential for us that we are not afraid to try things that might not work. And that is just the art of making video games and frankly gaming platforms. “
Mixer was part of Microsoft’s strategy for its gaming business. The company has been using the terms “Content, Community and Cloud” to describe its vision for the future of gaming. It recently reinforced its content channel by acquiring and building new studios. You are investing in cloud games, even through xCloud. And Mixer was part of the effort to expand their community.
In the game streaming space, Google has launched its Stadia platform, and Amazon is reportedly announcing its own service. Both have a strong cloud infrastructure like Microsoft, but lack the level of exclusive content that Xbox has. However, what they do have are social platforms with a large community of players in the form of YouTube and Twitch.
“In terms of our strategy, I feel really good,” says Spencer. “Our growth in content is a direct result of us looking closely, we have Azure like a cloud and we can build a cloud gaming platform with xCloud on top of that. Community, Xbox Live is almost 100 million players monthly, growing in all platforms, we see people coming from iOS, Android, now we are on Switch, we are on PC, obviously on Xbox. We see that the community continues to grow.
“But as we think further, we need to be everywhere where people want to play. And our xCloud strategy allows us to do that, anywhere, any device where people can play an Xbox game, we want to be able to offer That doesn’t mean we should own all of those social platforms, but we’re having very strong conversations with many of them about where xCloud will be available. And for our content creators, that’s just another way for them to find new players and bring great content to those players in a new context. That’s one of the things that excites them the most.
“Consoles are, what, a 200 million unit market? It has its geographies where it is, but there are many geographies where consoles will never be a dominant form of people playing. And through technologies like the cloud and xCloud , we will be able to take these games and deliver them to new players. And for the creators, they just build the game they were always going to create on the platform they have been building on for years, and still find millions upon millions of new clients. That’s really exciting for studios. “
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