Xbox Wants To Get to 3 Billion Players With or Without Consoles, Says Publishing Head

Xbox is looking to gain even more players in the future, and they think they have a surefire way of doing it.

Peter Wyse, head of publishing for Xbox, reiterated the company's plans to reach 3 billion players by committing to enhancing user diversity across all of their platforms, writes PC Gamer. His claims come after the massive success of Microsoft and Xbox at this year's E3, where Game Pass mostly stole the show.

Wyse says that one game serves as a good first step in their inclusivity efforts: "Tell Me Why," developed by "Life is Strange" maker DontNod Entertainment. The game, which is currently free until the end of June as part of the Pride Month celebrations, has been hailed for its solid representation of the LGBTQIA+ community when it was released last year.

Aside from "Tell Me Why," Xbox and Microsoft's presentation at E3 2021 is also markedly different compared to its past iterations, according to Polygon. It looked like they weren't targeting a very specific type of gamer with regards to their announcements. Wyse also said that their focus on inclusivity doesn't only cover games but also their partner developers and recruiting processes as well.

As a result, Xbox and their efforts to make gaming more accessible to everyone is giving them enough confidence to target 3 billion players, regardless of platform. Xbox boss Phil Spencer said that they want to reach as many gamers as they can no matter what devices they play games on, writes CNET.

Xbox Targeting a Much Wider Market

With these announcements, Microsoft is looking to disrupt the console gaming market in a major way, which could mean that hardware-locking could be a thing of the past.

Two of Xbox's biggest competitors in Sony and Nintendo have been known to basically "hardware-lock" many of the games released on their platform. Of these two, however, PlayStation is actually branching out to PC with already two major releases on Steam: "Horizon: Zero Dawn" and "Days Gone." Nintendo is still keeping their cards close to their chest, but nobody can really blame them. While already a hardware revolution in its own right, the Switch is still a low-powered handheld that can't compete with a full-size console.

Much of Xbox's confidence gained from its E3 presentation stems from its future plans for Game Pass. Their subscription service was extremely well-received during the showcase, especially Xbox Cloud Gaming. Aside from this, there are also rumors that Microsoft is tapping the services of some of the greatest names in the industry, namely "Metal Gear" creator Hideo Kojima. That is, if rumors about his signing are to be believed, writes Tech Radar.

With Cloud Gaming, Xbox is literally going to bring a lot of major AAA releases to anyone on any platform, even mobile. And that's not something that Sony or Nintendo can counter, at least as of yet. Microsoft has the potential to shake up the gaming industry if things pan out.

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by RJ Pierce