Category: IGN

The Coalition is taking fans back to where it all started with Gears of War: E-Day, and that means revisiting the horrors of Emergence Day and the Locust horde.

Brand Director Nicole Fawcette and Creative Director Matt Searcy opened up about the studio’s desire to focus on the “scary” aspects of Gears during an interview with IGN. Searcy says the team wants to “capture a moment in time” and “tell a very intimate story about what happened” to the people in one of Sera’s cities.

“For us, it’s like a what-if story,” he said. “What if the ground opened up and monsters came out? Yeah, it’s set on a fictional, other planet, but there are very human reactions and stories we get to tell. To do that, we need to be able to tell a story that feels like a horror story.”

Searcy continues, explaining that Gears of War: E-Day will still have the heart and sci-fi the series is known for, but it will also focus in on this specific moment in time by telling a story that takes place over only a few days. The decision to lean in more on horror comes from The Coalition’s desire to recapture the feeling of terror many players might remember experiencing when playing through the series.

“We looked back at what people felt like when they played Gears of War or any of the Gears – Gears 4 included,” he said. “But when people tell you what they remember playing, the things that stood out to them, the feelings, a lot of it is about these, kind of dark, almost horror-esque, scary moments.”

Searcy continued: “So we basically took that feeling, that vision that’s in everybody’s head, and we’re like, ‘That’s the game we’re going to build.’ We’re going to build that game with all the skills we’ve learned, with all the technology we’ve built, and sort of go hard at that. So definitely part of the story is about reintroducing the locust to Gears as scary monsters from the ground come up. And then you realize as it goes on, this is not just monsters, there’s an army here and it’s bigger than anybody thinks it is.”

Fawcette elaborated on how new technology is allowing The Coalition to present the Locusts in new, horrifying ways.

“Through Unreal Engine 5, we now can show the locust at that visual fidelity that is believable as scary creatures from the subterranean,” she said. “And so, like you saw in the trailer, we’re really kind of leaning into those horror vibes as fans remember it and as time has moved on. What was scary in 2006 is very different than 2024. There’s sort of that just doubling down on how people remember how they feel about it.”

Why E-Day?

Gears of War: E-Day is detouring away from the storylines of Gears of War 4 and Gears 5, but as The Coalition explained in an Xbox Wire post, they won’t be abandoning that era of the Gears saga forever. Searcy tells us that the studio chose to go back in time for their next Gears of War game not because they were finished with the previous storyline but because revisiting Marcus and Dom’s relationship made sense for the team itself.

“For us, there is a story here, for our studio, of how we found our way to E-Day,” he explained. “It was about, sort of, reflection, and part of it is just the energy that rolls up about, this was the story we wanted to tell at this time. So, it wasn’t really about picking between these things, it was just a snowball of the stuff that was on the table and this is the one we wanted to do right now.”

Fawcette chimed in, saying that when the idea for Gears of War: E-Day came about, it was a feeling of “Hell yeah. We want to make this.”

Searcy continued: “We love those characters, and like I said, it’s really nice to have a franchise where we can tell stories of different places. When we’re at Gears 4 and 5 we tell these stories, and Tactics, that goes at a different time, and all these sorts of things. For us, it is just the one we wanted to work on now is the one that felt right.”

The Coalition revealed Gears of War: E-Day during yesterday’s Xbox Games Showcase. We’ve not seen any gameplay yet, but this first footage promised a return to the series’ roots with a touching moment that saw the return of fan-favorite character, Dom Santiago. It’s been 13 years since fans watched Dom him sacrifice himself for his fellow COG brothers in Gears of War 3, so while Fawcette and Searcy promise a horrific prequel that explores one of humanity’s darkest days, it’s sure to be an emotional journey, too.

Gears of War: E-Day is currently without a release date. For everything else you announced at the Xbox Games Showcase, you can click here.

Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He started writing in the industry in 2017 and is best known for his work at outlets such as The Pitch, The Escapist, OnlySP, and Gameranx.

Be sure to give him a follow on Twitter @MikeCripe.

Amid multiple leaks and rumors, we had a decent idea of what was going to be at this year’s Xbox Games Showcase with seemingly plenty to get excited about. But when the Showcase finally aired, Microsoft did the near-impossible for any company in a fickle social media-fueled age: they exceeded expectations and drew almost universal acclaim. Eighty-four percent of the 10,000+ voters in my X poll graded it an ‘A’ on the academic scale. Ninety-five percent gave it an ‘A’ or ‘B’.

A home run like this would be welcome at any time, but it’s an especially fortuitous one now for both Xbox fans and, no doubt, Xbox employees alike. Confidence had been shaken in recent months, with dedicated fans rankled by Microsoft’s decision to bring some previously exclusive games to other platforms. Worse, Microsoft joined the tragically long list of gaming and tech companies to lay off thousands of employees early in the year and, more recently, shut down four development studios it acquired as part of a $7.5 billion deal just four years ago. Two of those were household names in core-gaming circles: Arkane Austin, who, their recent Redfall misfire aside, had an incredibly impressive track record; and the one that really stuck in the community’s craw, Tango Gameworks. They were not only Xbox’s lone Japanese developer, but they’d had an unquestionably good run, highlighted by their most recent and arguably best game, Hi-Fi Rush.

While Xbox’s best showcase ever can’t erase the human impact on the laid-off developers nor reignite the creative embers that have been snuffed out at the shut-down studios, it is the best way for fans who remain invested in the Xbox ecosystem to move forward with confidence and excitement for the future of the platform. And my goodness did that top-to-bottom brilliant showcase give me confidence and excitement for Xbox.

Call of Duty debuted on Xbox’s stage for the first time since the Xbox 360 era, with Black Ops 6 already looking like it could be one of the biggest and best releases for the series in a half-decade – since Infinity Ward’s excellent Modern Warfare reboot in 2019. Head of Xbox Phil Spencer could barely contain his excitement on stage in announcing Doom: The Dark Ages, a bold, more melee combat-intensive prequel in id Software’s brilliantly revived and historically iconic first-person shooter franchise.

And speaking of prequels, Xbox President Sarah Bond introduced the “one more thing” game for this Showcase: the long-anticipated new entry in the Gears series, which itself was not a surprise. What shocked everyone, though – which the trailer slowly made more apparent – was that we wouldn’t be picking up Kait’s story in Gears 6, but instead we’ll be going back to Emergence Day and the formation of Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago’s Delta Squad in a Gears of War prequel – complete with a most-welcome (by me, at least) restoration of the “of War” part of the name.

But the 2024 Xbox Games Showcase didn’t just start big with Black Ops 6 and Doom: The Dark Ages and end big with Gears of War: E-Day – it kept cooking for almost the entire runtime. A new gameplay trailer for Fable floored me, as not only was I not expecting to see any more of it after getting our first tiny glimpse at gameplay at last year’s Showcase, but we got to see quite a bit of Playground’s gorgeous new rendition of Albion. The cherry on top was Microsoft committing to a 2025 release window, which means we can already pencil in Doom: The Dark Ages and Fable for next year – my gut says the former will drop in the Spring, and the latter in the Fall.

Oh, but South of Midnight belongs on that 2025 list too! We got a proper gameplay trailer for Compulsion’s first game since joining the Xbox family after it was announced with a cinematic piece last year, and the art style is incredibly beautiful and wholly unique.

Meanwhile, it didn’t get a release year attached to it (meaning, assume 2026 for now), but the game that stole the fantastic show for me was Perfect Dark. The long-gestating reboot of the beloved Nintendo 64 classic (and decently liked Xbox 360 launch title) has reportedly endured a troubled development, but the co-developers at The Initiative and Crystal Dynamics blew me away by showing off a gameplay-packed trailer that showed off gadgets, first-person shooting, and parkour, leaving me optimistic that we might have a slick combination of Mirror’s Edge, Deus Ex, and the original Perfect Dark on our hands.

Even the inevitable mid-show lull that every showcase like this goes through yielded compelling reveals: the ‘90s-set adventure Mixtape feels like it was made for me specifically, Metal Gear Solid: Delta appears to be both a gorgeous and incredibly faithful remake of the classic Metal Gear Solid 3, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle only “disappointed” me with an otherwise A+ story trailer because we didn’t get a more specific release date than “2024.” But it does reaffirm that within six months I’ll be playing the next effort from MachineGames, a studio that has never missed.

In fact, Xbox’s 2024 Games Showcase was so spectacular and packed with huge first-party games that I didn’t even notice that two of their biggest pillars were missing: Halo and Forza. Granted, I wasn’t expecting anything from Halo, as we’re still only 2.5 years past Halo Infinite’s release. But Forza? Surely a new Forza Horizon – arguably Xbox’s most consistently brilliant franchise – is in the works! If you’re Microsoft, you know you’ve had a heck of a showcase when Halo and Forza can stay home and nobody seems to mind.

I suppose there was one rumored thing that ended up not being included: an Xbox handheld. Fortunately, I got a chance to ask Phil Spencer about that directly afterwards, and I’d say he came as close as he could to confirming its existence without formally announcing it.

If this stellar showcase reaffirmed anything for both Microsoft and Xbox fans alike, it’s that a powerful console is great, and Xbox Game Pass offers a nice value option, but a consistent diet of top-shelf games is what matters more than anything else. More of this please, Microsoft.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of both IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.

Obsidian Entertainment has posted a 30-minute deep dive for its upcoming fantasy action RPG Avowed, revealing an extended look at its gameplay in both first and third person.

This lengthy look at gameplay in the world of Eora comes directly from Xbox itself and goes into some of the magical tools players will have at their disposal when embarking on their adventure later this year. Game Director Carrie Patel touched on these details during the interview, but the feature that might have fans the most excited is the promise that you will have the option to play in both first and third person.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard won’t have a full gameplay showcase until tomorrow, but BioWare just released a tiny sneak peek at in-game footage — its first ever — in the meantime.

You can watch the 20 seconds of gameplay below. In it, we see Rook, the name for the playable protagonist in The Veilguard, with Dragon Age mainstay Varric. “She’s the best damn detective I’ve ever met,” Varric is heard saying in the footage. “If she says she’s got a lead on Solas, I believe her.”

Enjoy this sneak-peek at tomorrow’s Gameplay Reveal!

Rook and Varric arrive in the stunning – and seedy – city of Minrathous. Little do they know what dangers await. Tune in tomorrow to find out: https://t.co/UGVqA1ZiTE #DragonAge pic.twitter.com/LSJ3oBVoZo

— Dragon Age (@dragonage) June 10, 2024

Solas, as fans know, is the former companion of the protagonist in Dragon Age: Inquisition who’s actually the elven god Fen’Harel, or the Dread Wolf. As for who is it that might have a lead on him, we could already glean from yesterday’s cinematic trailer reveal that Varric may be talking about Neve, who’s referred to as “The Detective” in the showcase of companions. But if that wasn’t clear enough, the quest objective of “Find Neve Gallus” that pops up should erase any confusion.

Otherwise, it’s just a brief look at Rook and Varric descending into the city of Minrathous, complete with a moody, foreboding atmosphere. It’s quite the departure from the lively cinematic trailer that debuted yesterday during the Xbox Showcase, which had some fans worried that The Veilguard would veer too far away from the darker tone and art style of previous Dragon Age entries.

The response had some, including BioWare cinematic designer Derek Wilks, urging Dragon Age fans to wait for tomorrow’s gameplay reveal before casting judgment. The early reaction to the quick look at gameplay has largely been positive, with fans relieved that it does still indeed look like a Dragon Age game.

Tonally so different from that reveal trailer, seems genuinely dark and foreboding… this feels like dragon age.

Thank god 🙏

— Ameer (@SynthPotato) June 10, 2024

Information on the decade-in-the-making sequel has slowly been trickling out since yesterday’s trailer reveal, including the fact that The Veilguard will let you play as a human, elf, dwarf, or qunari. Fans will have to wait for tomorrow’s official gameplay showcase for more, though.

In the meantime, check out IGN’s exclusive interview with BioWare general manager Gary McKay where he explains, among other things, why they changed the name of the fourth Dragon Age game from Dreadwolf to The Veilguard. And for everything that was announced during yesterday’s Xbox Showcase, check out our roundup.

Alex Stedman is a Senior News Editor with IGN, overseeing entertainment reporting. When she’s not writing or editing, you can find her reading fantasy novels or playing Dungeons & Dragons.

Doom: The Dark Ages promises a bold new take on the long-running shooter’s legacy. Revealed in a short but loud trailer as part of the Xbox Games Showcase, it features dragon riding, mech battles, and a much darker, more ‘metal’ visual palette. But those grimdark ideas aren’t the only new elements, nor are they the most significant. For in the Doom Slayer’s left hand is a shield to protect him from demons. And in his right hand is a flail, the bludgeoning chain weapon of the middle ages. Yes, Doom’s going melee.

It must have been a challenge for developer Id Software to know where to go next after it had seemingly perfected the Doom formula with the deeply smart and relentlessly energetic Doom Eternal. The answer, of course, is to do what Doom has always done: reinvent itself. And so while the medieval-like setting and melee combat of Doom: The Dark Ages was something few of us expected, it wasn’t truly a surprise. Of course Doom was going to take a wild leap for whatever came next.

“It’s a medieval war against Hell,” said Hugo Martin, Studio Creative Director at Id Software, at IGN Live. “You say the word medieval and you gotta have melee weapons.” And so replacing the Doom Slayer’s chainsaw is a flail and shield, both of which appear to be integral to the reforged combat loop. The shield, a Captain America-like buckler, has revving chainsaw teeth around the circumference and can be hurled through enemy hordes. The flail, meanwhile, can strike foes from their demonic mounts. Joining them is the Doom Slayer’s own body, since his kick is as good a weapon as any mace. While guns are clearly still the key part of the toolset, it seems like close-quarters combat has been upgraded from ‘supplementary’ to ‘core’. That’s a strong new approach for the series that lives and breathes firearms.

Of course, this isn’t the first time that Id Software has taken a bold step. In fact, Doom’s entire history is a series of energetic creative leaps. The 1993 original may have been built on the core tenets of Wolfenstein 3D, but Doom’s big push was the inclusion of networked multiplayer – the very mode that coined “deathmatch” as an immortal video game term. The following year’s Doom 2 was admittedly more conservative, but it brought with it the Super Shotgun; the powerful double-barrelled buckshot launcher that proved just a single weapon could reposition a whole game. The Super Shotgun is now arguably the most iconic gun to have ever existed in a video game, despite only being able to fire two shells per reload in a game that never lets up on enemies.

It was 2004’s Doom 3, though, that really proved Id Software’s guts. The vibrant reds and oranges of its formative games were exchanged for gloom and shadows as the series experimented with survival horror. While much too action packed to live comfortably alongside Silent Hill, Doom 3 was eerie and occultish in a way its predecessors weren’t. Its most fascinating mechanical innovation was a flashlight that could only be used when your weapon was holstered, forcing you to choose between seeing what horrors lurked in the pitch black and being able to blow their heads off. The system lent Doom 3 a distinct tone and unique pace, forcing you to be slower, more methodical, and more scared. It was a controversial mechanic, one that would be quickly removed by modders and officially eliminated by a 2012 re-release. But it was also emblematic of what Id believed Doom could be.

For Doom’s next regeneration, which started development in the late 2000s, the studio understandably looked to Call of Duty. The FPS behemoth’s cinematic campaigns proved alluring templates, but as production progressed the Doom 4 team recognised that none of those ideas worked for either their series or themselves. It was bold, true, but not the right flavour of bold. And so a back-to-the-drawing-board approach eventually resulted in 2016’s critically acclaimed Doom. Its name said it all: this was the definitive version of what Id Software made all those years ago. But that certainly didn’t mean it was conservative or nostalgic; this was a shooter with a huge emphasis on rhythm and speed, combining gameplay with music in a way that the developers of the ‘90s could never even dream of. The result was practically a heavy metal album with frenetic, fluid fights. Before Titanfall 2 arrived, Doom made it clear that movement was the fabric of the new generation of shooters.

If Doom’s headline feature was its speed, then its quietly revolutionary trait was how it dealt with health. The scrapped Doom 4 prototype had pilfered Call of Duty’s regenerating hit points, a system that demanded you take cover to patch yourself up. Doom 2016 rejected that idea entirely; if you wanted to heal then you had to kill in exchange. That philosophy spawned the Glory Kill executions, which tore apart enemies like pinatas to reveal the health kits inside. And in Id Software’s most recently released experiment, 2020’s Doom Eternal, this simple idea became the core.

“Ballistic resource manager” perhaps isn’t the sexiest thing to call your hyperkinetic FPS, but that’s exactly what Doom Eternal not so secretly is. Forget the financial economy, this is the bullet economy: you kill to harvest what you need to kill even more. This results in a chain of rapid slaughter where every kill is a decision – you must not only select the right weapon for the enemy you face, but also eviscerate that enemy in the manner that will produce the items required. Need armour? Then set thy foe aflame. Need bullets? Chew them up with a chainsaw. Need health? Rip and tear with your fists.

Through this approach, Id Software rethought the entire fundamentals of not just Doom, but the arcade shooter as a whole. For a series and genre that had historically been considered ‘mindless’, Eternal dials up the smarts. It rejects your wish to just kick back and blast away, forcing you to the edge of your seat with its demands of speed, precision, and forward thinking. It’s a design encapsulated by Eternal’s most polarising enemy: the Marauder, a beast that’s surely the progenitor for what comes next in Doom: The Dark Ages.

The single aspect that most surprised me in the new trailer was seeing the Doom Slayer parry a Hell Knight. I was instantly reminded how battles with the Marauder demanded much more precision and timing than a regular Doom shootout, with split-second dodges and perfect reactions to its telegraphing eye flash required to defeat it. This unusual switch in tempo meant many disliked how the Marauder interrupted their flow, but I relished its challenge. Doom: The Dark Ages’ use of a parry suggests that it has found a way to reinvent the fundamentals of the Marauder, using those split-second reactions to turn the tables on enemies.

What we don’t see in the trailer are any Glory Kills. And the combat itself seems much more forward-momentum heavy, rather than the enemies-from-all-sides battle arenas from the previous two games. And so it appears that The Dark Ages could be an even more significant departure from what was laid down in Doom and Doom Eternal than just the melee factor. We’ll have to wait to see exactly what all the components of this new, more grimdark iteration of the series are, but whatever they turn out to be, I’m pleased it’s more of the same; more of Doom’s insatiable appetite to reinvent itself every time.

Matt Purslow is IGN’s Senior Features Editor.

After the announcement of Gears of War: E-Day during the Xbox Games Showcase. some fans expressed concern that Microsoft and Gears developer The Coalition were walking away from the story set out in Gears 4 and the most recent game in the series, Gears 5.

Not so, according to Microsoft. In a post on Xbox Wire, Microsoft touched on the future of Gears, insisting “this isn’t the end of other ongoing stories in the Gears series.”

“The team is content with the stories told in Gears 4 and Gears 5 and is by no means abandoning them, but the collective passion for such an iconic origin story was simply too great to ignore,” Microsoft said. ”The story of E-Day and the origins of Marcus and Dom are such powerful, pivotal events that The Coalition couldn’t wait to tell it.”

Warning: Spoilers for Gears 5 follow.

2019’s Gears 5 ends on something of a cliffhanger, with Kait telling Marcus Fenix she’s off to hunt down Queen Reyna. Beforehand, the player, aka Kait, decides to save either JD Fenix or Del, leaving Reyna to kill the other.

Gears of War: E-Day, however, is set 14 years before the events of Gears of War 1, and tells the story of Emergence Day (the day the Locust burst out from under the earth to attack Sera).

In the Xbox Wire post, The Coalition creative director Matt Searcy and brand director Nicole Fawcette discussed the decision to make a prequel next, rather than the perhaps expected Gears 6. “We’re super proud about Gears 4 and Gears 5 and the stories that were told,” Fawcette said. “We’re not retreating from that storyline in any way. But in [this] moment, we had an opportunity to write our next step, and this one just felt too good to miss.”

In a follow-up interview with IGN, Searcy expanded on the decision. “For us, there is a story here for our studio of how we found our way to E-Day that was about reflection,” Searcy explained. “And part of it is just the energy that rolls up about, this was the story we wanted to tell at this time. So it wasn’t really about picking between these things, it was just a snowball of the stuff that was on the table and this is the one we wanted to do right now.

“We love those characters. It’s really nice to have a franchise where we can tell stories in different places. For us, this is just the one we wanted to work on now, this is the one that felt right.”

The decision to go with a prequel was a topic of discussion when IGN interviewed Xbox boss Phil Spencer at IGN Live. Spencer said doing a prequel instead of Gears 6 is “a nice opportunity for that team to establish their Gears.”

“Following on Gears 5 just because of the numerical thing, I think it would just… this was an opportunity for them to take it back to an origin story that has a lot of real depth to it in terms of Emergence Day and tell that story through The Coalition as it is today,” Spencer said. “I thought, what a great opportunity. I was excited.”

The question, of course, is with Gears of War: E-Day in active development at The Coalition, it may be some time before Microsoft continues the overarching Gears storyline with a potential Gears 6. Some fans have suggested another team be handed the responsibility of continuing the story in partnership with The Coalition, but Microsoft has yet to indicate a willingness to do so.

Gears of War: E-Day is currently without a release window. For more of what Microsoft has up its sleeve, check out everything announced at the Xbox Games Showcase 2024.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

A snippet of new information about Dragon Age: The Veilguard has emerged regarding the races players will be able to play as in the game.

In BioWare’s fantasy role-playing game, players assume the role of a protagonist called Rook they can customize. In already released promotional material for the game, we can see Rook as a Human. According to tweets from Bioware’s Mike Gamble, who is leading the next Mass Effect at the studio, you can also have your Rook be an Elf, Dwarf, or Qunari.

Of course

— Michael Gamble (@GambleMike) June 9, 2024

Of course

— Michael Gamble (@GambleMike) June 9, 2024

Another snippet of info from Gamble is confirmation that companion armor can be changed out, which is an important feature for fans.

Yes

— Michael Gamble (@GambleMike) June 9, 2024

BioWare’s Dragon Age: The Veilguard reveal leans heavily on the cast of seven companions who join Rook on their adventure. Indeed Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s first trailer, shown off during Microsoft’s Xbox Games Showcase, introduces all seven companions. Here’s the list, per publisher EA:

• Bellara, a creative and romantic Veil Jumper obsessed with uncovering ancient secrets.
• Davrin, a bold and charming Grey Warden who has made a name for himself as a monster hunter.
• Emmrich, a necromancer of Nevarra’s Mourn Watch who comes complete with a skeletal assistant, Manfred.
• Harding, the dwarven scout, returns to the fray as a companion with her big heart, a positive outlook, and a ready bow – as well as unexpected magical powers.
• Lucanis, a poised & pragmatic assassin who descends from the bloodline of the House of Crows, a criminal organization renowned throughout Thedas.
• Neve, a cynic fighting for a better future, both as a private detective and a member of Tevinter’s rebellious Shadow Dragons.
• Taash, a dragon hunter allied with the Lords of Fortune who lives for adventure and doesn’t mind taking risks.

BioWare previously confirmed that Dragon Age: The Veilguard will be centered around these companions, prompting the name change from Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. In an exclusive interview with IGN, BioWare general manager Gary McKay revealed some more details on what to expect from The Veilguard, as well as explaining some of the logic behind the name change.

“One thing that’s important to remind fans is that every Dragon Age game is a new and different experience and this game, more so than ever, is about you and your companions – a group that you must rally to fight by your side,” McKay told IGN at the time. “…“In the end, it was most important for us to have a title that was authentic to the companions that are the heart of this adventure we’ve created.”

The Veilguard has a fall 2024 release window, with a gameplay reveal set for June 11.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Hot on the heels of Microsoft’s Xbox Games Showcase, CEO Phil Spencer sat down with IGN’s Ryan McCaffrey at IGN Live 2024 to run through what some have called the best video game showcase in years.

The reveal included fresh looks at upcoming big hitters in Xbox’s now enormous arsenal of franchises following its $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Xbox mainstays Gears of War, Fable, and Perfect Dark were joined by the likes of Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and Diablo… all these huge series got their time to shine. It was a blistering showcase focused squarely on the games, and based on initial feedback online, the games looked good.

But Microsoft’s showcase has hit the headlines during one of the most troubling times for Xbox in recent memory. Earlier this year, Microsoft announced 1,900 staff would lose their jobs across its gaming business, and then came the shock closure of Redfall developer Arkane Austin and Hi-Fi Rush developer Tango Gameworks as part of devastating cuts at Bethesda. Is any studio, regardless of critical or commercial acclaim, safe?

Meanwhile, Microsoft faces difficult questions about the future of Xbox consoles, which have seen sales plummet year-on-year, as well as an apparent struggle to grow subscription service Game Pass. Microsoft is bringing even more of its games to rival platforms with the announcement that Doom: The Dark Ages will launch on PlayStation 5 alongside Xbox Series X and S and PC. When it comes to Xbox, the times certainly are changing.

During our interview, Spencer discussed all this and more. Read on for the complete IGN Live interview with Phil Spencer.

Ryan McCaffrey: I think you just had the best showcase you’ve ever had. I said it before you got here.

Phil Spencer: Thank you, Ryan.

Ryan McCaffrey: It really was fantastic. Now I know you plan these things months and months in advance. For anybody that doesn’t know, planning for this starts like the beginning of the year. So I’m curious, at what point do you, with this one this year, do you get a feeling that, oh, this one’s looking pretty good?

Phil Spencer: Honestly, until our fans, the customers, you guys give us the feedback… Aaron Greenberg and I were talking about this two weeks ago. The thing that probably hit me the most was obviously just the passion of the teams of putting their amazing work on stage and seeing so many teams do great work. But it was, I’d say two months ago, when I just looked at the scale of the franchises, how much work the teams were doing to show up in the way they did and the partners that we had in the show. I was in awe of the show.

Ryan McCaffrey: There’s a couple games I want to ask you about specifically before we’ll talk about some other stuff too. For me, of all the great stuff from today, stole the show for me was something I wasn’t expecting to see today again, which was Perfect Dark.

Phil Spencer: I knew you were going to say that!

Ryan McCaffrey: Perfect Dark, a first-person spy espionage, some parkour, a little Mirror’s Edge in there, which I love.

Phil Spencer: All playable, all in-game.

Ryan McCaffrey: And that game’s been cooking for a long time.

Phil Spencer: It has. Our partners at Crystal [Dynamics] have been doing amazing work there.

Ryan McCaffrey: So what has it been like for you to follow the very long trajectory of that game from, that started with Darrell Gallagher starting a studio [The Initiative].

Phil Spencer: Just down the street.

Ryan McCaffrey: And now we’re finally here. So how has it been getting to this point with Perfect Dark?

Phil Spencer: In parallel, building a studio while you’re building a game, and something that Perfect Dark back to N64 and obviously us with PDZ on 360, like there’s just such anticipation for that game, and I really appreciate everybody’s patience because we’ve been talking about this for a long time. And my team can verify this – when I saw it, I said, this is the one that Ryan’s going to love. Because we know his love for spy and I said, this is the one. I’m just so proud of the team and it really just came together so well.

A cool little story: Darrell had our other studio heads down at the studio just yesterday and walked through that same section in-game to show them, this is a game being played. And I love seeing our community of creators coming together that way.

Ryan McCaffrey: The one more thing, which we were all hoping for and got was a new Gears of War game, but it wasn’t Gear 6!

Phil Spencer: It was not!

Ryan McCaffrey: You have a visibility into everything, but I’m curious, when you’re in a meeting with, maybe it’s Matt Booty, maybe it’s Alan Hartman, but The Coalition folks, but when you learn they’ve gone down the E-Day road, the prequel road rather than Gears 6, what was your reaction when you found out that that was going to be the next direction for Gears of War?

Phil Spencer: Well you know this, we’ve had some changes in leadership at the studio. Rod [Fergusson], who was there, is now leading Diablo for us. So I actually thought – a Diablo game I’m playing a ton of – I thought it was a nice opportunity for that team to establish their Gears. Following on Gears 5 just because of the numerical thing, I think it would just… this was an opportunity for them to take it back to an origin story that has a lot of real depth to it in terms of Emergence Day and tell that story through The Coalition as it is today. I thought, what a great opportunity. I was excited.

And then you probably saw, I know you heard it, the Mad World tune, for those of us who remember the 360 commercial, how iconic was that? So when they went back and sourced that and brought that through the piece, I think it just showed that they stayed true to what Gears is, but tell a new story, a new arc.

Ryan McCaffrey: Now you’re wearing a very cool Xbox Pride shirt today, but a year ago at the Xbox Showcase, you freaked out people like me by wearing a Hexen shirt, which is a game that I have very near and dear to my heart. You had just acquired Hexen. You own that as a part of many other things. But then today I see the reveal for Doom: The Dark Ages, and I go, wait a second…

Phil Spencer: How awesome was that?

Ryan McCaffrey: … are you secretly making a Hexen game in the Doom universe? I know you and I share the love for this.

Phil Spencer: Yeah. No, I would like to say I’m actually smart enough to predict anything like that. I wasn’t. But definitely if you look at Doom: The Dark Ages, and thanks to Marty [Stratton] and the team they let me introduce that. I was going through all my old-school stories, for those as old as me who remember it’s Doom 1 on a floppy. My only PC that could run it was my PC at Microsoft. So I would sneak in at night, put it in so I could play. So the opportunity to stand there and get to announce a Doom, and then Doom: The Dark Ages, which definitely has some Hexen in it, and I just thought, Hugo [Martin] and the team, fantastic work. I’m so proud.

Ryan McCaffrey: Now I can’t help but bring up something that’s been a topic of conversation a lot recently, which is that Doom: The Dark Ages is also going to ship on PS5, something that you’ve done with some other games. So from a business level, can you walk me through… you paid $7.5 billion to acquire Bethesda / ZeniMax. So what’s the calculus? What’s the process there for deciding, okay, new Doom, let’s keep it multi-platform as it has been rather than just put it on Xbox? So what’s the thought process there?

Phil Spencer: Well, on Doom, it’s definitely one of those franchises that has a history on so many devices. I think they have Doom running on a lawnmower somewhere. It’s a franchise that I think everybody deserves to play. And to be honest, I was in a meeting with Marty and the team a couple of years ago and I asked Marty what he wanted to do and he said he wanted to ship it on all platforms. I said, let’s go do that. It was as simple as that.

Now I want to bring it back though, because I get a lot of questions about, hey, if I’m an Xbox owner, what does it mean? And what I want to say – and I thought it showed up so well in the show today – you saw an amazing collection of games that are coming to Xbox. They’re going into Game Pass day one, and Game Pass showed up so well. If you buy the game on our console, you get to play it on PC. So the cross-entitlement stuff is all there.

And we’re focused on future hardware with forward compatibility. Our commitment to our Xbox customers is you’re going to get the opportunity to buy or subscribe to the game. We’re going to support the game on other screens, and you are going to see more of our games on more platforms. And we just see that as a benefit to the franchises that we’re building. And we see that from players and the players love to be able to play.

Ryan McCaffrey: You haven’t really commented publicly much in the last couple months, so I wanted to ask you about the studio closures and Tango Gameworks and some of the thoughts behind the decision-making there. I mean, you had a critical darling in Hi-Fi Rush. You had folks like Aaron Greenberg saying it checked all these boxes for us and did all the right things here. So walk me through the decision of why really Tango specifically, not to disrespect the other studios that were closed, but that was the one that really seemed to kind of stick in the community’s craw a bit. I’m hoping here that you can take the opportunity to address that closure and some of the recent changes in Xbox.

Phil Spencer: Yeah, the closure of any team is hard, obviously on the individuals there, hard on the team. And I try to spend all of my focus, as you said, I haven’t been talking publicly about this, because right now is a time for us to focus on the team and the individuals. It’s obviously a decision that’s very hard on them and I want to make sure through severance and other things that we’re doing the right thing for the individuals on the team. It’s not about my PR, it’s not about Xbox PR, it’s about those teams.

In the end, I’ve said over and over, I have to run a sustainable business inside the company and grow. And that means sometimes I have to make hard decisions that frankly are not decisions I love, but decisions that somebody needs to go make. We will continue to go forward, we will continue to invest in what we’re trying to go do in Xbox and build the best business that we can, which ensures we can continue to do shows like the one we just did.

Ryan McCaffrey: On the Activision Blizzard saga…

Phil Spencer: You call it a saga?

Ryan McCaffrey: Well, just from covering it and watching it it felt like it put five years on my life to somebody that covers Xbox. I can’t imagine how it was for you. But as that came to a close and you started integrating Activision Blizzard King into Xbox Studios, has that changed the way that you think about running the business at all? Because the organization just got quite a bit larger almost overnight in a sense.

Phil Spencer: No. I mean we’re still, and I hope we showed this today, we’re going to be about building great games for people to play, about giving them choice on Xbox to go play. We’ve got a broader library of games. The thing I’m starting to see, which I really love, is the organic collaboration between our teams that are coming out and trying to build that community of creators that, I mean, you and I will go back to the time of Xbox where we basically had four games: Fable, Forza, Gears, Halo. And we would just literally, every four years I would have to come to E3 and I’d somehow try to make those four games seem different every year for the community.

And now what we have in gaming is just an amazing collection of teams and franchises that are doing great work. I feel an added responsibility as somebody who loves this industry for the franchises that show up on our stage. But I still think in the end it’s about putting amazing games out. I’m really proud of the work that Ninja Theory did with Hellblade and the response to that. And we have an amazing internal team now that’s focused on us doing a bunch of Unreal games as an example. And then you see things like South of Midnight, which might’ve been my game of the show, I thought it looked so good, you got Perfect Dark, you have Gears.

So for us, as the organization gets bigger, I think it’s just more important that we can take bets together and try to do innovative, creative things, and that will continue to drive us.

Ryan McCaffrey: Phil, you and I in the past have talked a lot about the past of Xbox because there’s a lot of great memories. But the present, as we saw today on the Xbox Game Showcase is great. The future looks super promising here, and the Xbox business has changed dramatically.

Phil Spencer: It has.

Ryan McCaffrey: And so when you make an almost $70 billion acquisition, do you start hearing from your bosses more? Or are they still staying out of your way and letting you run the business? Because that’s not an insignificant amount of money to spend on growing the business.

Phil Spencer: It’s definitely not an insignificant amount of money! No. The support we get from the company, and my boss is the CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella. Hey, Satya. We are given a ton of leeway to go and run and grow our business. But I’ll say the thing that we challenge ourselves to do is to try to do new things.

If I go back eight years ago, we said, hey, we’re going to go ship all of our games on PC and console, and if you buy one on one, you get it on the other. And I got some reaction from people of, this is the worst decision ever. This is going to be the end of Xbox. We announced Game Pass and we started doing Game Pass, and I know some people looked at that and said, oh, you’re going to teach people that games are free and you’re going to undermine the value in games.

And what I can say sitting here today from our decisions on cloud, on Game Pass, on console, right now we have more Xbox console users than we’ve ever had in the history of Xbox. And even when I look at things like the impact of Game Pass, because I watch that and I love Game Pass, how it showed up in the show today I think was fantastic. But we also want people to be able to buy games. So I go back and I look and I say, okay, over the last five years, what’s happened to game sales on our platform? We’re up double digits every year over the last five years on game sales, on Xbox consoles.

Doing a $70 billion acquisition will push us to try to do more. It’ll push us on cloud, it’ll push us to go find customers in new places, continue to think about access to amazing games, enabling creators to do great work. But I actually think for the team, that’s just a self-motivation that the team has and it’s fun to be a part of.

Ryan McCaffrey: Black Ops 6 day one Game Pass.

Phil Spencer: Some people said I wouldn’t do that.

Ryan McCaffrey: Most people in this room have probably been used to spending 60, 70 bucks on it every year. Now if they’re already subscribing to Game Pass they’re good to go.

Phil Spencer: But it’s a choice. We didn’t say to anybody, you have to subscribe to play. If you want to buy Black Ops, great. It’s great for us, it’s great for the developer. If you want to subscribe, it’s also great. I want to give you the choice on how you play your games and who you play with and not try to do slimy platform things to force you to do what I want you to do. Give the players choice and what they want to do and who they play with.