Xbox leader Phil Spencer talks about Halo's future, HoloLens and more

Microsoft plans to release Halo 5: Guardians as a Xbox One exclusive in just over a month from now on October 27. However, Microsoft's Xbox head Phil Spencer says in a new interview that the Halo franchise could still be around in some form well into the future.

In an extensive chat with GameSpot, Spencer says:

"It's a franchise and an IP I expect to be around 20 years from now, much the same way Star Wars and Spider-Man and other things are. I think it has the weight that it can support that, but I think that the franchise then needs to be managed in a way that doesn't burn it out."

Spencer also talked about the Microsoft HoloLens augmented reality headset, which was used at E3 last June in a Halo-themed demo to members of the press:

"I think it's going to be a while before we see this as a mass consumer market device, but I love the ideas that the teams are coming up with. I think it's too trivial to say it was just demo ware, but in no way do I want to say, "Hey everybody. There's a Halo game coming for HoloLens", because it's not there. I think the ideas on where that will go will be really crazy cool to watch over the next few years."

In addition, Spencer talked about the state of the Xbox business in general and how it works within Microsoft as a whole:

"The thing I'll say about us and Team Xbox and what we're trying to do is we work for a company in Microsoft that isn't driven in this space to go dominate anybody or to put somebody else out. The reason Satya's (Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO) interested in gaming, the reason the Windows 10 focused on the consumer and gaming is so prevalent inside the company right now, is we see opportunity. We see opportunity to delight customers, to give them more reasons to engage with the platform that we have, and it's really all about the unrealized opportunity that's in front of us."

Source: GameSpot

John Callaham