I remember when buying an Xbox game meant taking it home and playing it. Well, that relationship has become a bit more complicated. Xbox now wants you to watch the game, wear the game, visit the game and perhaps eat something created through a suspicious brand partnership.
Playing it is apparently only the beginning.
Microsoft has launched XP, a new Xbox division created to expand its gaming franchises into film, television, merchandise, live events, attractions and partnerships. Kayleen Walters will lead the operation after working at Mojang and spending 13 years at Lucasfilm. So she knows a thing or two about taking a fictional world and placing it on almost every object inside a shop. XP contains four separate branches. Xbox Pictures will handle films and television. Merchandise will be dealt with by Xbox Products. Xbox Places gets the interesting job of creating attractions and live experiences, and Xbox Partnerships will connect the company’s games with outside brands and creators. Xbox Wire
Now that is quite a bit of Xbox.
Although the announcement does not reveal which games will receive the full treatment, Microsoft does have plenty to choose from. We are talking about Halo, Gears of War, Forza, Fable, Minecraft, Doom, Fallout, The Elder Scrolls and Call of Duty. And I’m guessing somebody has already discussed a Forza film involving a driver with family drama and one final race. Vin Diesel should probably check whether his car is still parked outside.
Jokes aside, Xbox has good reason to enter this space. The massive success surrounding A Minecraft Movie and Fallout showed that video-game adaptations can respect the games without simply copying them. After years of watching Hollywood struggle with video-game films, we have finally reached a point where actors no longer look embarrassed to be standing beside something created on a computer.
However, XP is not only interested in films and television.
Microsoft wants Xbox properties to become products, events and places people can visit. Like a little Disneyland. The company has not announced specific attractions, but imagine walking through a Fallout vault or entering a Minecraft world without having to punch a tree when you arrive. A Forza experience could also work, although I don’t think anybody would allow visitors to drive the expensive cars.
The possibilities are exciting and nerve-racking at the same time. Because once a game becomes a major franchise, the story is no longer its only responsibility. The only reason characters may need to survive is because somebody has already approved the action figure. Also, a mysterious side character could end up getting more screen time because a television spinoff sounds profitable. And before long, the game starts feeling like the first stage of a marketing campaign.
I just think that sometimes a game should be allowed to end.
What a peculiar idea.
Microsoft says games will remain at the centre of everything XP creates. Players will certainly hold the company to that promise. Xbox has experienced studio closures, cancelled projects and a changing strategy that now places some of its games on competing consoles. Fans may therefore wonder whether XP will support those games or simply use them as material for everything else.
Walters’ work at Mojang offers some reassurance in that regard. Take Minecraft, for example. It has expanded into education, toys, clothing, spin-offs, a successful film and upcoming theme-park attractions without abandoning the game that started it all. But I agree, not every franchise can follow the same plan. Minecraft naturally works as toys and family entertainment. But something like Gears of War attraction would require a different approach.
For crying out loud, nobody wants a Locust appearing during lunch while the children are trying to finish their chips.
The timing also says quite a lot about modern entertainment. Hollywood is currently pulling stories from every successful game it can find. ARC Raiders and The Finals are heading towards screen adaptations, and Xbox clearly wants greater control over how its own franchises travel beyond gaming.
XP shows that Microsoft no longer sees Xbox as something that lives beneath a television. It wants to build a collection of worlds that people can watch, visit and take home.
That could give us brilliant new adaptations and experiences.
It could also give us Call of Duty breakfast cereal.
Honestly, both feel equally possible.
