Phil Spencer wants Epic Games Store and others on Xbox consoles

In an interview with Microsoft's CEO of Gaming during the annual Game Developers Conference, Spencer told Polygon about the ways he'd like to break down the walled gardens that have historically limited players to making purchases through the first-party stores tied to each console. Or, in layperson terms, why you should be able to buy games from other stores on Xbox - not just the official storefront.

Spencer mentioned his frustrations with closed ecosystems, so we asked for clarity. Could he really see a future where stores like Itch.io and Epic Games Store existed on Xbox? Was it just a matter of figuring out mountains of paperwork to get there?

Chris Plante at Polygon

The answer is yes, Spencer claims. I don't know how realistic any of this is, but to me it makes perfect sense, and the gaming world has been moving towards it for a while now. At the moment, I'm doing something thought unthinkable until very recently: I'm playing a major Sony PlayStation exclusive, Horizon: Forbidden West, on PC, through Steam on Linux. Sony has been making its major exclusives available on Steam in recent years, and while seeing these games on Xbox might be a bit too much to ask, I wouldn't be surprised to see storefronts from companies who don't make game consoles pop up on the Xbox and PlayStation.

Games have become so expensive to make that limiting them to a single console just doesn't make any commercial sense. Why limit your audience?