One of the biggest failures of Microsoft's involvement in the PC space has been its treatment of gaming relative to the Xbox brand. Halo came late then stopped coming. Gears of War and Forza have never gone PC. [Correction: Gears of War 1 did.] So you'd be forgiven for assuming that Microsoft has given up entirely on the idea of gamers on a PC and Xbox playing together. But, surprisingly, it has not.
Pointing to both previous failures (Shadowrun) and current small-scale examples (Skulls of the Shogun), Microsoft's Phil Spencer has told AusGamers that the idea of PC and Xbox One gamers competing against each other online "makes a lot of sense".
"I’m not allowed to leak things [smiles]", he said. "But I think what you’re talking about makes a lot of sense."
He later adds, "[A] connected ecosystem across all the different devices is definitely where I think the future of gaming is going; you don’t have to do it as a developer, but you have the capability and I think a system like Xbox Live across all those screens where you know who someone is and who their friends are, what their Achievements are and their progression is really critical to that."
Microsoft's Phil Spencer Talks Xbox One: Cross-Platform, Indies, Subscriptions and Much More [AusGamers, via PC Gamer]