The big cheese of Xbox himself, Phil Spencer, mentions boldly that Sony isn’t really their main competitor. Despite the console wars still going on in the front lines especially with the next gen consoles, Spencer mentions that Xbox’s biggest long time rival wasn’t really what he was worried about. The reason? Cloud based gaming.
In an interview with Protocol, Spencer stated out that it wasn’t Sony that was his biggest concern. But instead, Google and Amazon. Phil mentioned that he didn’t really believe in PlayStation’s ability to set up cloud-based infrastructure that can rival Redmond firm’s Azure Setup.
When you talk about Nintendo and Sony, we have a ton of respect for them, but we see Amazon and Google as the main competitors going forward. That’s not to disrespect Nintendo and Sony, but the traditional gaming companies are somewhat out of position. I guess they could try to re-create Azure, but we’ve invested tens of billions of dollars in cloud over the years.
Phil Spencer
Sony does have a contract with Microsoft to use their servers. Before Google Stadia, the only game streaming service available was PlayStation Now. Considering Google Stadia’s poor reception and connectivity issues, it’s hard to say how much Microsoft will benefit from putting their focus on cloud based gaming.
I don’t want to be in a fight over format wars with those guys [Nintendo and Sony] while Amazon and Google are focusing on how to get gaming to 7 billion people around the world. Ultimately, that’s the goal.
Phil Spencer
Source: PushSquare, Protocol
