Microsoft: Our first party games are superior to Sony and Nintendos

Gran Turismo, The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros – these are some of gaming’s biggest IPs, but Microsoft has said that its selection of first party trounces them all.

That’s according to Xbox CFO Dennis Durkin, who in an interview with IndustryGamers reacted badly when it was suggested that more developers need to be added to the Microsoft Game Studios programme in order to compete with Sony and Nintendo.

"I would ask you to go and look at some of your data,” he retorted. Compare first party performance over the course of this lifecycle, because I think our first party performance in terms of quality bars and units per title this shift has been superior to our competition’s.

"But certainly we think first party is an important tool and you can’t dispute titles likeForza, which has consistently come out on a repeated cadence and sold multi-million units. You can’t dispute things likeFable, which again, on a very consistent pace, has come out and sold 2 and 3 million units a pop. And now new titles, likeKinect Sports, which has come out and sold over 3m units.

So we are, not only building existing IP and incubating around titles likeHaloand others, but really building new IP in new areas. And that’s going to be core to us… to build those experiences and monetize those."