14 DAY TRIAL // The Xbox One from Microsoft might be behind the PlayStation 4 from Sony in terms of sales at the moment, but it seems that the team in charge of the next-gen console believes that its media element can help make it competitive once more in the long term.
Nancy Tellem, the executive leading the Xbox Entertainment Studios, is quoted by VG247 as saying that Microsoft has been exploring and actively working on exclusive media content and deals for one year and a half before the platform was launched.
Meanwhile, Sony has only recently entered the entertainment space and is struggling to compete directly.
The executive states, “Microsoft’s dedicated a whole studio to support this kind of content development. Original content is something that everyone’s toying with right now. It’s very unclear how committed they are to that on PlayStation.”
When the Xbox One was launched, many potential customers were excited to hear that Steven Spielberg himself would be directing a full live action series that would feature Halo’s Master Chief as the main character.
Since then, no clear details have been offered on the content, but Microsoft has recently suggested that it will have a fuller reveal at some point in 2014.
Tellem also says that Microsoft has a lot of exclusive properties that it can use in order to create new media content for the Xbox One.
She adds, “Whether it’s from a game like Fable, or Age of Empires, or Gears of War, or Forza or Halo. These are things that, frankly if we weren’t attached to Microsoft, everyone would yearn to have. It’s an amazing platform to work from.”
At the moment, the first Xbox One original programming series set to debut is a documentary that will chronicle a dig at the landfill where Atari buried a huge number of video game copies, including those for the E.T. title that was overproduced.
More content will be announced in the coming months, but both the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 will struggle to compete in the media space with Amazon, which has launched its own Fire TV solution, at the moment only for users in North America.
A new firmware update for the Microsoft next-gen console will be launched in April and the company has explained that it will deliver updates for the console, the controller and the headset adapter.
An update on the sales struggle between the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 will arrive when the NPD Group releases its March numbers.