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Call of Duty: Black Ops 2: Phil Spencer Wants Shooter for Xbox One Backward Compatibility

Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft’s Xbox division, expresses his desire for Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 to join the list of Xbox One’s backward compatible games.

According to information found on the Xbox Feedback site, Activision and Treyarch’s 2012 shooter Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 is currently the most highly requested game by fans for the Xbox One’s backward compatibility program, with more than 207,000 community votes, which is far more than gamers’ second choice of The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, which presently holds upwards of 170,000 votes. Although Skyrim is an incredibly coveted candidate to become backward compatible on Xbox One, not only do the fans want Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 to show up on the program’s list more, but also the head of Microsoft’s Xbox division, Phil Spencer, has expressed his interest in the shooter making its way onto the company’s current generation platform.

In response to a fan on Twitter, Spencer revealed his desire for Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 coming to backward compatibility by initially apologizing for his lack of response by not addressing the community’s sheer craving for the title to show up on the program’s catalog of games. The Xbox boss followed up his apology by saying, “I really want to see this come to BC.”

[Source:- GR]

Microsoft’s Phil Spencer discusses the importance of physical disk drives and pricing Project Scorpio

During a trip to Sydney, Australia for the launch of Forza Horizon 3 on Xbox One and the Xbox FanFest, Phil Spencer sat down with NZ Gamer to talk about the announcement and launch of the new Xbox One S console and the upcoming Project Scoprio. While a lot of what was discussed had been stated previously in other recent interviews, of particular interest was the part of the conversation concerning the implementation of 4K streaming capability on the Xbox One S and upcoming Project Scorpio consoles and the reality that, right now, not many regions have internet speed high enough to take advantage of it.

“It was one of the reasons we made the physical media decision that we did,” he says in response to a statement about slow internet speeds in countries like Australia and New Zealand. “I know that if you look at usage on the box, you would say ‘Hey, everybody is watching YouTube, everybody is watching Netflix. Why would you do anything physical?’ But I do think markets where bandwidth capabilities and caps, and cost is prohibitive. So we wanted to make the decision that there would be physical media. I think for us games and the native rendering of 4K games is going to be important for Scorpio, which obviously alleviates any kind of need to stream. But I think we’ve been conscious that not everybody lives in a bandwidth happy, uncapped world.”

While incredibly likely that Project Scorpio, like the Xbox One S, will have a 4K physical disk drive, Phil Spencer is quick to state that that hasn’t been confirmed yet. “We’ve seen great adoption of it with the S. People seem to like it, but those kinds of decisions aren’t the decisions that we announced at E3,” he clarifies. “That’s not a push-back, I’m just saying those are the kind of decisions that can kind of bind later, what the drive is. But it has been really great to see how people have responded to the S, and it seems like we would want to continue to ride that option.”

Another detail many gamers and developers have been keen to learn is the eventual price of the new Xbox console, something that could equally make or break the device in regards to overall sales and adoption. As expected, he doesn’t reveal any specific details but does provide some insight into where abouts the price will sit in regards to the Xbox One S and previous video game consoles.

“So you can see the price of the S today. When we designed both of these, which we kind of designed it in parallel. We thought about the price performance of what we wanted to hit with the Scorpio, relative to what we were going to be able to do with the S. So that we would have a good price continuum, so people wouldn’t look at these two things as so disconnected because of the price delta,” Spencer explains. “So I think you will feel like it’s a premium product, a premium console. And not something, anything more than that. So I wouldn’t get people worried that this thing is going to be unlike any console price you’ve ever seen. We didn’t design it that way. That said, the opening price point for the Xbox One S, and the different hard drive sizes that is a critical part of this whole product. When I think about it as a product line, you should expect the pricing to kind of be in line with that.”

Project Scorpio is expected to release publically sometime during the fourth quarter of 2017 and specific details concerning pricing and its final name (Project Scorpio is just a temporary codename) should drop sometime next year.

[Source:- Winbeta]

Phil Spencer explains why Halo 5 probably won’t come to PC

It’s a positive thing that Microsoft wants to bring some of its first-party Xbox exclusives to PC, but one awkward question remains to be answered: where is Halo 5? During a media Q&A at Microsoft’s //Build/ 2016 conference today, Phil Spencer addressed that very question, while attempting to explain why some games will remain exclusive to particular platforms.

Spencer declined to state that “all” Microsoft published games will hit both platforms. Instead, games will release for Xbox or Windows 10 depending on their suitability for either platform. Using RTS Ashes of the Singularity as an example, Spencer implied that it’s not a great fit for console, even though Xbox One will get mouse and keyboard support down the line.

“If I enable keyboard and mouse on a console – which we will do – and then you download [Ashes of the Singularity] and you’re playing on a monitor, is that a PC game or a console game? I get out of saying ‘all,’ because I think there are games that people want to play in front of their monitor with a keyboard and mouse, and I want to be somebody that builds those games.”

There are games that Spencer believes work fine on both platforms: he cited Forza 6 as an example, and Quantum Break and Rise of the Tomb Raider are clearly other examples. He doesn’t want to make release parity across those platforms a rule, though. “I don’t want to make it some kind of artificial mandate, because then I think we end up with ‘Frankengames’, games that really weren’t meant for a certain platform. And because some suit said, ‘Hey, everything’s gotta run on both platforms’, you end up with something people don’t want.

“You should expect it when franchises look like they belong on both platforms, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s a mandate for the studios because it’s not.”

That’s all well and good, but where’s Halo 5? Spencer returned to his Frankengame analogy, explaining that Halo 5 was designed from the beginning to release for consoles. On the other hand, Halo Wars 2 was developed with both Xbox and PC in mind, and Spencer cited that as a reason for its success on both platforms. “In terms of Halo FPS on PC, I think there’s a ton of opportunity for us right now, but I don’t want to get into a world where we’re looking back, like at Halo 5. It doesn’t mean there’s nothing there that could ever end up on PC, but I’d much rather look forward with what our plans are.”

It’s not a thoroughly convincing answer – Forza 6 is coming to PC after all, albeit as a free-to-play variant – but it does serve to quell any excitement that we might get Halo 5 on PC in the near future.

[Source:- PCgamer]