Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft’s gaming division discusses the future of Xbox with technology publication Protocol, stating that both Nintendo and Sony won’t be the company’s primary competition going forward as they look to cloud gaming.

It’s no surprise hearing this come from Microsoft, as over the last decade the company has invested billions in cloud services that’ll be used for upcoming projects, and integrated into the next-generation of Xbox. While both Sony and Nintendo have proved to be giant obstacles for Microsoft, there is one area that they have over them as of now, and that’s their Azure cloud services.  It’s for this reason that Phil Spencer believes that both Amazon and Google will be their primary competitors as those companies have invested just as many resources going into their own cloud services.

“When you talk about Nintendo and Sony, we have a ton of respect for them, but we see Amazon and Google as the main competitors going forward,” Spencer told Protocol. “That’s not to disrespect Nintendo and Sony, but the traditional gaming companies are somewhat out of position. I guess they could try to re-create Azure, but we’ve invested tens of billions of dollars in cloud over the years. I don’t want to be in a fight over format wars with those guys while Amazon and Google are focusing on how to get gaming to 7 billion people around the world. Ultimately, that’s the goal.”

Phil did state that Microsoft would be willing to cooperate with both Nintendo and Sony on allowing gamers to play with and against one another, though didn’t expand further on this. We should note we wrote up a report last year about Sony and Microsoft striking a partnership to improve cloud gaming, so this cooperation could very well be underway.

This news has certainly stirred up a lot of talk on the internet, we would love to hear what you guys think about this.