In a podcast interview with the New York Times on Monday, Phil Spencer, Xbox director for Microsoft, advanced another cross-platform cooperative effort in which the ban on Xbox Live would result in similar penalties on PlayStation Network or other services. online games.

“It’s a tough industry,” Spencer admitted, “[but] When someone is banned from one of our networks, is there a way for us to ban them from other networks? Or at least as a player, so I can bring my list of banned users, because I can still block people from my game. “

Spencer’s hypothesis was one of a number of intriguing remarks made to Kara Swisher of The New York Times, and it underscores her take on Xbox Live as not being a social network – or at least, a different network. from Facebook and Twitter. Spencer reiterated that Microsoft sees Xbox Live as “not a free speech platform” but a platform based on interactive entertainment, where controversy and confrontational user engagement is “a strategy of death ”for their business.

“We’re not here to allow a conversation to take place on our platform,” Spencer said. “It’s very difficult to come to Xbox Live and say, ‘OK, I want to go and create a political party on the platform.’ … It’s really designed for the community around the interactive entertainment and games that run on our platform.

Microsoft released a set of community standards in 2019, separate from the Xbox Code of Conduct, that used real-life examples to set their expectations of gamer behavior and guide them to have fun and speak up. , but reasonably. Light jokes, or even harsh but precise criticisms of someone else’s play, are okay. But using racial slurs, communicating physical threats, insulting someone’s sex, sexuality or national origin are all grounds for punishment, with repeat offenders the longest banned.

The same guide follows other forms of communication on Xbox Live, such as player gamertags, guild or clan names, or avatar images. In any event, the company has made it known that it will moderate according to the spirit of its policies, not just the letter of their law. Spencer echoed this in his discussion with Swisher, while acknowledging that “there is work that we need to continue to do in this space.”

Spencer noted that Microsoft recently bought a company that built an automated moderation toolkit used by Xbox Live. For now, a lot of enforcement action comes after players report one another’s behavior through handy tools in the Xbox Live interface.

Elsewhere, Swisher asked Spencer for clarification on what he meant on November 19 when he said that Xbox “is evaluating every aspect of our relationship with Activision Blizzard.” Spencer was responding to another report from the Call of Duty / World of Warcraft editor, who since the summer has faced allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination, and other abuse in the workplace. “I don’t think my job is to punish other companies,” Spencer said.

Swisher asked why Xbox couldn’t send Activision a message like, “We don’t want to do business with you unless you [clean] above. ”Spencer said the company should base its decisions on engaging partners at the company level, rather than endorsing or opposing specific leaders within another company. “It’s obviously not our position to judge who the CEOs are,” Spencer said.

The rest of the interview also touches on Spencer’s take on parent involvement in a child’s Xbox Live presence and time spent playing. Swisher tried to pin Spencer on his opinion of the Chinese government’s new restrictions on underage children playing online games, but the furthest he’d go would be to say he didn’t think it was going to be a strategy. effective.