Xbox boss calls StarCraft "seminal" and says he's "excited about getting to sit down with the teams"

Xbox boss Phil Spencer says “what could happen” with older Activision Blizzard franchises like StarCraft is “pretty exciting”.

Asked what could be on the horizon should Microsofts acquisition go ahead, Spencer added that he was “excited about getting to sit down with the teams at Activision and Blizzard and King to talk about back catalogue and opportunities that we might have”.

“The first thing I would say is, Im not allowed to make any decisions about what happens at Blizzard or Activision or King,” Spencer told Wired (via NME). “So this is all just kind of talking and thinking about what the opportunity is.

“Not only StarCraft, but WarCraft, when you think about the heritage of RTS games that were talking about here, specifically from Blizzard.”

Whilst he was very careful not to commit to anything or give too much away, Spencer said that whilst he didnt “have any concrete plans today” and “cant really get in and work with the teams” just yet, he acknowledged that “StarCraft was a seminal moment in gaming”: “from an esports perspective, from RTS on console perspective, and from just an RTS storytelling perspective in the genre”.

“Im excited about getting to sit down with the teams at Activision and Blizzard and King to talk about back catalogue and opportunities that we might have,” he added. “So I will dodge the question other than to say its not something I can actively work on right now. But the thought of being able to think about what could happen with those franchises is pretty exciting to me, as somebody who spent a lot of hours playing those games.”

StarCraft 2 stopped getting new content in late 2020, just over 10 years since the games original launch.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer has made Microsofts plainest promise yet around the future of Call of Duty on PlayStation platforms. Earlier this week, Spencer pledged to keep releasing Call of Duty games on Sonys consoles “as long as theres a PlayStation out there to ship to”.

The future of Call of Duty on PlayStation has become a contentious topic for regulators such as the UKs Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which is currently scrutinising Microsofts planned $68n takeover of COD publisher Activision Blizzard.