Phil Spencer, head of Xbox, claims that the big announcements the company has recently revealed, specifically the new Play Anywhere program launching across Xbox One and PC, are not being made directly based on what their closest competitor, Sony, is doing.
Spencer made the comments during a recent interview with The Guardian, stating that the decisions made by himself and Microsoft are purely based off of consumer desires.
“Sony is doing incredibly well with the PS4 but they’re doing something fundamentally different from us,” Spencer said. “We’re not building a strategy in response to what they’re doing; we’re building a response to what I see customers and gamers asking us for.”
The new Play Anywhere program will allow players who purchase any games published by Microsoft to have access to play them on either PC via Windows 10 or on Xbox One, but Spencer says this is not a ploy to convert players from one to the other.
“We just know … the health of PC gaming is incredibly high right now, and we know some of our best and most active customers on Xbox One are also PC gamers—so we see this opportunity to service the customer and where they actually play, and they want to stay connected to their friends wherever they are. Things like Xbox Play Anywhere are really about choice and where they want to play.”