Major Nelson talks about the future of Xbox as a digital platform
During an interview, Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb, director of programming for Xbox LIVE, spoke about the important progress that has taken the industry regarding the sale of digital titles and how this technology will allow players to bring their games to any future platform of Xbox.
“I think the world is—with every passing year and month, every passing moment—the world is more and more comfortable with digital purchases, and frankly that’s what consumers are demanding,” said Hryb to GameSpot. “They want to have that flexibility of content unlocking and being available the moment a game is released. Being able to download it at their leisure.”
He also spoke about Xbox Play Anywhere, a program that started this year that allows players to buy the digital version of an Xbox One and get a digital copy for Windows 10 at no extra cost, and vice versa.
“We wanna make sure that gaming for Microsoft equals Xbox,” he added. “Xbox has always been a gaming console, and over the last year and a half or so, you’ve seen it become the gaming brand for Microsoft. Under that, it can mean what you want it to mean. Whether you’re part of the PC group that wants to have the latest and greatest in 4K gaming, 120 frames per second, that whole routine. Or maybe you just want to sit down and play a great game on a console and don’t have time for that. We’re trying to make sure we have something for everybody, no matter how they want to game, where they want to game, or when they want to game.”
The manager said he hopes consumers to interact with Xbox as a platform rather than a generational piece of hardware. For this, let us see that Project Scorpio will be an important part of this movement.
“Once we reveal more information about Project Scorpio in the coming months and over the next year, I think it’s about choice,” continued Hryb. “There are certainly people that have the time and the resources to build their own PC, and they want to have the latest graphics card when it comes out. And that’s fine! That’s a great audience, we love those folks! But there are also folks who only have time—maybe like six hours a week—to play games. They’ve got other commitments in their life, they can just pop a game into a console or have it already downloaded and play it immediately. So, I think we’re trying to give people the choice of how and when they want to game.”
During the rest of the interview, Hryb reiterated what Microsoft said about Project Scorpio: The system is part of the Xbox family and all previously purchased content by users will be available in the next console. To read the full interview, you can go to GameSpot.