With the announcement that Minecraft was making its official debut on the nintendo Switch, a couple of years ago, a very unlikely partnership between Microsoft and Nintendo came to fruition. Ever since, both companies have enjoyed the benefits of actually supporting each other.
Nintendo gets some of the critically acclaimed titles released for Microsoft consoles, and Microsoft gets to sell their games on a Nintendo platform; one that is far more popular than Xbox is in Japan, mind you. Long story short, everybody wins; particularly players all over the world.
While it is true that players are the ones that have, seemingly, benefitted the most out of this unlikely alliance between Microsoft and Nintendo, some have felt the need to "port beg" for more Microsoft games making their way into Nintendo's console; or at least that's what the head of Xbox believes.
In a recent interview with Unlocked, Microsoft's Head of Xbox Phil Spencer has revealed that their releationship with Nintendo has never better, and that he particularly loves working with the Japanese company, but this has been an eye-opening experience, especially because of port beggers.
Spencer reveals that he would much rather set expectations for Xbox consumers, in regards to new games being announced, rather than for Nintendo consumers, and rightully so — since Microsoft should focus on delivering content to their consumers; Xbox games releasing on Nintendo is only a plus, not the goal.
The transcript of the interview, thanks to the people over at Go Nintendo, reads as follows:
The relationship with Nintendo is great. Doug Bowser and I, we talk often. Furakawa-san, the CEO of Nintendo, and I know each other well and we have conversations.
I will say that I think the individual IP by IP to different platforms, I can see can kind of get confusing to customers over time. We've been learning, some of our development partners have really wanted to go do this, and we want to support the desires of our creative talent. Some of this have been partner lead.
I think more and more about what does a full Xbox experience mean on different platforms. Right now, it seems like when any game comes out, there's that, "is this one going here is this one going there." I'd rather be able to set more of an Xbox-level expectation for our fans on where things are going to go. I thought we did that with our first party when we talked about games shipping on Xbox and PC, and I got some blow-back from certain people in certain groups on that, but at least we set an expectation on that. I'd rather see us get to that point on the different pieces of hardware we're on, so I guess I'll kind of leave it there.
I definitely have a ton of respect for the role that Nintendo plays, and I love having great games on their platform. I don't really love this idea that for every one of our games, there becomes this little rumor on it "is it going to end up on the Switch or not." I feel we should set a better expectation with our fans than that.