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Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has once again reiterated that the tech giant’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard is more about mobile games like Candy Crush than Call of Duty.
In an interview on The Verge’s Decoder podcast, transcribed by VGC, Spencer claimed that mobile gaming is seeing far higher growth than console or PC. He also admitted that Xbox has a minimal presence on mobile. He said, “Anybody who picks up their phone and decides to play a game would see that on their own.”
With that absence in mind, Spencer considers it urgent for Microsoft to make a presence in the space. He said, “If we’re not able to find customers on phones, on any screen that someone wants to play on, you really are going to get segmented to a niche part of gaming that running a global business will become very challenging.” Basically, as mobile gaming grows and console gaming remains stagnant, the Microsoft’s market share will shrink. He concluded that, “It’s critical that if you’re trying to run an at-scale global gaming business that you meet your customers where they want to play, and more and more, mobile is the place people want to play.”
He also indirectly responded to criticism from Sony concerning Microsoft’s future ownership of Call of Duty. “The idea that Activision is all about Call of Duty on console is a construct that might get created by our console competitor,” Spencer said.
Spencer’s statement is in line with what he has said in the past. In an interview in August, he said that mobile was “the biggest gaming platform on the planet.” In October, he noted that the company plans to treat Call of Duty like Minecraft. In Microsoft’s filing with the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority, it stated that the company intends to open an Xbox-branded mobile store.
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