Xbox One Australia head on partnerships over internal development: 'We're not about building empires'

Article by Matt S.

The most interesting difference between Sony (and Nintendo) and Microsoft's approach to the games industry over the years has been the fact that while Sony and Nintendo have been focused on producing or publishing content in-house, Microsoft instead has an active partnering business; and not just around games, but the non-gaming stuff as well. The Xbox One is launching with all kinds of third-party television and entertainment apps in Australia, for instance, while the PlayStation 3 is making a big deal of its internally-developed Music Unlimited and Video Unlimited services.

If you consider Microsoft's history in business technology, then the energy it places in partnerships are hardly a surprise. From the simple (until the Surface Pro, Microsoft didn't produce the hardware that its Windows operating system sat on), to the less obvious (Microsoft is actively partnering with developers around the world to build corporate Cloud solutions and jointly taking those to market), Microsoft's history has always been about working with third parties to build a broad offering to market.

(Be sure to check out our review of the Xbox One hardware here)