Spencer talks up Xbox One and PC crossplay possibilities

Microsoft’s Phil Spencer has dropped a big hint that Xbox One will allow gamers to play competitively against PC users online.

When asked by AusGamers about whether the shared architecture between the console and PC – as well as the increasing use of cloud tech – could facilitate such functionality, Spencer replied: I’m not allowed to leak things [smiles]. But I think what you’re talking about makes a lot of sense.

Now you have differences in Windows gaming and console gaming around control and input. In fact if you go back to Shadow Run on Xbox 360 – something I worked on – we had PC players playing against Xbox 360 customers. We didn’t have tremendous success with that, but we learnt a lot from it.

And then earlier this year we released Skulls of the Shogun, which was a game we launched on all three platforms on the same day, and you could start on one platform and then save the game to the Cloud and play across any of the screens and progress. And then Halo: Spartan Assault has some links between Halo 4 and Spartan Assault, even though they’re very different games.

This connected ecosystem across all the different devices is definitely where I think the future of gaming is going; you don’t have to do it as a developer, but you have the capability and I think a system like Xbox Live across all those screens where you know who someone is and who their friends are, what their Achievements are and their progression is really critical to that.”