Microsoft's Xbox leader Phil Spencer says the company plans to keep releasing some of its PC games on Valve's Steam service. It also will continue to expand the number of games on the Windows Store as well.
As part of E3 2016, Microsoft announced Xbox Play Anywhere, which will allow gamers to buy many of Microsoft's first-party titles for the Xbox One and to get the Windows 10 version of that same game for free from the Windows Store, and vice-versa. Many of those games will also support cross-play multiplayer between the two platforms. However, the biggest PC games store continues to be Steam.
In a chat on the Giant Bomb livestream (via GameSpot) Spencer says that Microsoft is not going to abandon Steam in terms of publishing games:
"I look at Steam today, it's on an incredible growth trajectory. It's a massive force in gaming; a positive force. I think it will be bigger a year from now than it is today. And five years later it will still be bigger again," he said. "I look at Valve as an important [independent software vendor] for us on Windows. They are a critical part of gaming's success on Windows. I don't think Valve's hurt by not having our first-party games in their store right now. They're doing incredible well. We will ship games on Steam again."
Spencer did not reveal which future PC games might be coming to Steam. At the same time, Spencer admitted that some of its own PC game launches in the Windows Store have not been received as well as others:
"They all haven't gone swimmingly. Some of them have gone well," he explained. "Forza 6 Apex did well. Quantum Break wasn't our best PC release. Killer Instinct did well on PC. Gears of War Ultimate Edition was OK--we definitely learned there."
Ultimately, Spencer believes having both Steam and Windows Store as places for PC gamers to get the latest titles is a good thing:
"There's going to be areas where we cooperate and there's going to be areas where we compete. The end result is better for gamers."
