Sarah Bond comments on studio closures, reinforces day-one on Game Pass and talks about next generation

During an interview with Bloomberg, Sarah Bond, president of Xbox, commented on the latest “controversies” around the brand.

In the interview, Bond admitted that the closure of Tango Gameworks and Arkane Austin was a decision “difficult“, but which was essential for maintaining the most relevant Xbox games. She also reinforced that the gaming industry is not growing as expected, and said that big decisions need to be made to maintain the health of the division.

In another part of the interview, Bond reinforced that the day one will continue to exist, including for Activision Blizzard games, even with some rumors saying that Xbox doesn’t know if it will still launch Call of Duty on the service. Speaking about the next generation of consoles, the president of Xbox stated that the development team is doing a “great job”, including on the backward compatibility.

To come, Sarah Bond too highlighted upcoming releases from Xbox Game Studios, like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Check out the excerpts:

“It was a very difficult decision, but you can still play Pentiment and Palworld on Game Pass, so nothing has changed. And Bethesda is very important to Xbox and the value of everything we do. There was a Fallout TV series recently, it was really good and then we have Indiana Jones coming out soon, that’s from Bethesda too, we’ll show it at the showcase, you like Indiana Jones, right? I really like.

It’s always extraordinarily difficult when you have to make decisions like this. I go back to what I was saying about the industry. When we look at these fundamental trends, we feel a deep responsibility to ensure that the games we make, the devices we build, the services we offer are always present, even when the industry isn’t growing, when you’re in a time of transition. Our commitment to ensuring the business is healthy in the long term.

Really, right now, for us and our teams, our focus is on peopleonlythose affected and to do everything we can to help them through this difficult transition. I read the opinions, for me personally it seems like a somewhat generic answer about trends inthe market, but nothing particularly tangible.”