Xbox Head Phil Spencer Thinks Games Will Survive COVID-19

Anyone who’s been paying attention to the news as of late knows that the games industry isn’t immune to the impact of COVID-19, although you’d also know that they haven’t been hit as hard as certain other industries: thanks to being largely digital, video game production can continue more-or-less unhampered from home office, and with more people at home than ever before, digital sales of games are at an all-time high. But while the immediate impact of COVID-19 has been relatively light for most of the games industry, according to Xbox head Phil Spencer, we’ll really feel the impact of COVID-19 in 2021, not 2020.

When Business Insider asked him about future cancellations and problems, he had this to say:

"Through the summer, early fall? I feel pretty good about those games. Games that were targeting a year from now or beyond? There'll be some impact, but they'll be able to react."

As for why, he elaborated.

"Mocap is just something that's basically stopped. We're not going into mocap studios. If you had all your animation captured and you're doing touch up in more individual art production and in areas like textures and other things, you're in a better position. If you're waiting for a lot of either large audio work — when it's with symphonies and other things — or mocap, you're held up right now and you're making progress in areas that you are."

He also specified that the kind of games that will be hardest hit will be games that rely heavily on mocap, such as Madden and FIFA, where trying to capture an authentic, realistic ‘feel’ for the game is of paramount importance. Still, in the broadest of terms, he feels optimistic that this won’t topple the games industry.

"I'm pretty confident in the industry's ability to continue a steady flow of games coming out. There's just a lot of games in production across the industry right now, and I think we're going to be — as an industry — we're going to be fine. I'm bullish on what this means in the long run for games, even if there's a certain impact to a certain launch window for certain titles that we might see."