Phil Harrison: Indie Titles Will Sell Consoles

In an interview with Xbox Achievements, Phil Harrison talked about ID@Xbox program and what’s the importance of games.

On the question of whether the indie titles will sell consoles, he responded with:

Oh totally, yeah. Undoubtedly. The existence of this level of creativity and this level of excitement from the development community is wonderful for our platform, it’s great for the industry as well. It gives an on-ramp for developers to get into development, which was previously not available to them, so I think that’s a positive thing. But we know for sure that games like Minecraft, like Limbo, have been system sellers in the past. There’s no reason to believe that that won’t be the case in the future.

 

He greatly appreciates indie titles, but he still remembers the importance of AAA titles,  console’s first party exclusives and publisher’s support :

So our commitment to the best first-party experiences is unprecedented and we continue to invest. But we are also very fortunate to have the support of the best publishers in the world, whether it’s Electronic Arts, whether it’s Activision, whether it’s Take-Two - they’re all bringing their incredible experiences to our platforms. 

Together with the ID@Xbox program, that’s what’s going to deliver the most amazing portfolio of games for the future.

He also noted he likes the engagement of his fans who spend around five hours a day on Xbox Live, using it for both games and entertainment. And he talked about Xbox One’s vision:

The vision of Xbox One remains to be the best place to play games, to have the most incredible entertainment experiences, connected to the biggest screen in the house which is in the living room. The momentum we have as a platform is fantastic, we have had the most successful launch in the history of Xbox, we have big games like Titanfall creating new records for concurrency of users.