Xbox CEO calls HBO's The Last Of Us 'a great moment' for gaming

It’s been a funny old time for PlayStation and Xbox’s relationship over the past year or so. Ever since it was announced that Microsoft is attempting to acquire Activision, Sony has been very concerned about the potential of Call of Duty becoming an Xbox exclusive, while Microsoft has been full of praise for its rival.

Last year, in an utterly bizarre move, Microsoft stated that “Sony has more exclusive games than Microsoft, many of which are better quality”, which is probably the last thing anyone would expect a huge company to say about its competition. Continuing that trend, in an interview with IGN, Xbox boss Phil Spencer has called The Last of Us TV show “fantastic”, and a “great moment” for the games industry.

Check out what’s coming up next on The Last of Us below.

“Well, it's fantastic. They've done a great job with an adaptation of a fantastic game on the television screen, and kudos to the team, all the teams that worked on it,” he said. “Obviously, the foundation of that is the work that Naughty Dog did in building the franchise. And I also think that - and he probably won't like it that I call him out on this - but the fact that Neil [Druckmann] himself has played a role obviously in the creation of the game and the franchise, but [to] see him applying his creative talents in the TV space […] I think is really great. It's great for him, it's great for the team.”

He continued, explaining that he believes that people in the games industry may have previously looked at other media (such as TV and film) and felt that their work may be lesser in some way, but The Last of Us could help change that.

“The fact that you take one of the greatest creators from our industry and you can have success in creating in another medium, I just think it shows that in the games industry, you have some amazing storytellers, amazing creators across all third-party, first-party,” he explained. “I think it's just a great moment to see the success that they're having with the franchise, and congrats to all of them.”