Games with Gold on Xbox One: “It might not look exactly the way things have looked in the past,” says Spencer

By Sherif Saed

Microsoft’s newly appointed head of Xbox division, Phil Spencer, has spoken about how the firm perceives the Games with Gold program and what it hopes to achieve with it on Xbox One.

Speaking to IGN at GDC, Spencer said that Microsoft is “trying to match what customers want.”

“The Games With Gold program on Xbox 360 has been successful for us,” he began. “It’s been part of the value people see in [Xbox Live] Gold, something we recognize that isn’t on Xbox One that isn’t there today. We haven’t announced a plan, but people should understand that we understand the expectation that people have around what the value on Xbox One Gold should be. It might not look exactly the way things have looked in the past, but the recognition that that form of content and that perk for being a Gold subscriber is important to people, something we definitely hear.”

Spencer was keen to avoid a comparison to Sony’s PlaySation Plus service. “The easiest way for me to answer it is to say from the time we initially announced this box, we’ve had feedback from people around how they would like multiple parts of the program to work,” he said.

“I think we’ve tried to respond to the feedback that we’ve received. We can’t always do exactly what people want for many different reasons, but we try to be open in terms of what we’re thinking about. So feedback to Xbox 360’s Games With Gold is being heard as we think about any future plans we might announce. The feedback loop is definitely active and we want to make sure we’re trying to match what customers want.”

Do you think they’ll eventually match what’s on offer on Sony’s platform?