After the universal acclaim for Sony’s God of War, Ryan McCaffrey took to social media to lament on how Xbox players are simply dying to be able to celebrate a masterpiece epic like God of War.
McCaffrey also noted that while Sony’s first-party studios are firing on all cylinders at the moment, it hasn’t always been like that. He suggests that it’s probably only during the last ten years that Sony has got it together and that Microsoft could, indeed, get to that level of quality, but that it might take time.
Phil Spencer, head of Xbox, decided to weigh in on the situation as he essentially agreed with McCaffrey’s summation.
Our hardware took time, our service/platform/BC took time and continuing to grow our 1P will take time. A high quality and diverse 1P (yes, with SP) built the right way is our goal and what our customers deserve. We can have similar results to what we've seen in hw and platform.
— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) April 13, 2018
Spencer appears to be acutely aware that there have been bumps along the way but now that Xbox, as a platform, is in a much better position, in terms of hardware, than in previous years, it’s a good foundation to begin building quality single-player experiences upon.
Given nothing like God of War is currently in the pipelines for Microsoft with the company having gone all-in recently with co-operative, games as services experiences like Sea of Thieves, this refocus to better compete with Sony’s first-party may take time, but it sounds like it’s coming nonetheless.