Thomas Mahler, the co-founder of Moon Studios and creator of the Ori games, has said that he fully believes in the direction that Phil Spencer is taking with Xbox.
Yesterday we reported that global sales of the Ori games are currently around 10 million units across all platforms. As most of you will know, the games initially launched on Xbox and PC, but were later also released for the Nintendo Switch. Unlike the studio’s upcoming title No Rest for the Wicked, the Ori games, however, didn’t make their way to PlayStation platforms.
Both Ori and the Blind Forest and Will of the Wisps were published by Microsoft Studios (now Xbox Game Studios), and some have suggested that things didn’t end well between Moon Studios and Microsoft. According to Mahler, however, this isn’t the case and he’s expressed to be confident that Moon Studios will do “exciting things” with Microsoft in the future. The Creative Director added that the fully believes in Xbox head Phil Spencer’s direction with the brand going forward.
“I didn’t have any bad ending, I’m pretty sure we’ll still do exciting things with Xbox in the future”, Mahler wrote on X as a reply from another X user about the relationship between Microsoft and Moon Studios. “We just wanted to ship Wicked on all platforms with Crossplay support and back then that was not possible under Microsoft. I 100% believe in where Phil is heading!”
Last month, Microsoft’s Phil Spencer, Matt Booty and Sarah Bond talked about the future of Xbox, revealing that four older former Xbox console exclusives would be making the jump to rival platforms, including Grounded, Sea of Thieves, Pentiment, and Hi-Fi Rush. As expressed by Spencer, it isn’t ruled out that other Xbox games will also go multiplatform in the future.
“I don’t think we should as an industry ever rule out a game going to any other platform”, Spencer said. “We’re focused on these four games and learning from the experience. I don’t want to create a false expectation on those other platforms that this is somehow the first four to get over the dam and then the dam’s going to open and everything else is coming. That’s not the plan today.”
