Former Xbox boss thinks all games will be connected like Titanfall in the future, but not at the expense of offline

Former chief product officer and corporate vice president for the Xbox team Marc Whitten thinks that more games will be connected like Titanfall in the future, but not at the expense of offline.

Whitten stopped by the Major Nelson Radio podcast during one of his last days with the company and talked about the past and future of Xbox, especially the evolution of its online features. “We’re clearly in the place where not only is every console and every device is going to have a service, but every game is going to be a service,” he said. “This is the way that we’ll have entertainment experiences and they’ll be connected together.”

Whitten said that we’re starting to see where things are headed with games like Titanfall, which uses Microsoft’s cloud computing. “Everybody obviously sees the Titanfall stuff with the cloud. It’s easy to get into a match, low latency, all those sorts of things. But then there’s this other thing where I’m relying on the cloud so I can offload more stuff. Now we have AI coming from the cloud as well. And as that becomes more and more of the tool set I think you’re going to see this deep and rich growth of new entertainment experiences.”

However, Whitten was quick to say that this future does not necessarily mean Xbox will have the kind of online requirements that stirred so much controversy leading up to the Xbox One launch. “No, I don’t mean at the expense of offline and all that kind of stuff,” he said. “I just think that having more tools for creators, to be able to use more crayons to draw the pictures, that’s all just great for us.”

Whitten announced earlier this week that he was leaving his job at Microsoft to join Sonos as its chief product officer.