Head Of Xbox Says There Are Currently “No Plans” To Bring Game Pass To Other Consoles

For some time now, there have been a few rumors that Microsoft was planning to bring Xbox Game Pass to Switch, with Microsoft themselves seemingly expressing interest in the idea in the past.

However, in a more recent interview with Gamesradar, Head of Xbox Phil Spencer has said there are currently “no plans” to bring Game Pass to “closed platforms” such as the Switch or other consoles. According to Spencer, this is because these consoles currently “don’t want” something like Game Pass on their systems:

“people usually ask me about releasing one individual game or another. And what I say is I want the full Xbox experience to be something that we deliver. We have no plans to bring it to any other kind of closed platforms right now, mainly because those closed platforms don’t want something like Game Pass. There’s a ton of open platforms out there for us to grow in: the web, PC, and mobile. So all of our focus, frankly, is on those platforms.”

Spencer went on to elaborate that he understands why other platforms may be reluctant to host Game Pass due to the potential “disruption” it could cause, and said that the Xbox team would nevertheless be open to discussions in the future:

“That’s not a slam on anybody else who has a system that works for them. I can see why the disruption of Game Pass is not something that they want right now. In the end, when we say we want everybody to be able to play on Xbox, we really mean if we can bring that full experience to a device that players want, we are totally open to those discussions.”

In a separate interview with German website Game Star last month, Spencer elaborated further on the idea want bringing the “full Xbox Experience” to other platforms entails, which provides a bit more context to his comments:

The thing about other gaming console platforms is we’re not able to bring a full Xbox experience on those platforms.

In places where we have, like mobile phones like we’re doing now with xCloud coming to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate…what we’ve done with PC in bringing our full Xbox experience there. Because we know when somebody is playing one of our Xbox games there is an expectation that “I’ve got my Xbox LIVE community, I have my achievements, Game Pass is an option for me, my first-party library is completely there”.

The other competitive platforms aren’t really that interested in having a full Xbox experience on their hardware. But for us, we want to be where gamers want to be and that’s the path that we’re on.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.