Spencer explains why Microsoft didn't bring Windows games to E3

Microsoft didn't really hold a press conference this week during E3, Xbox did.

While the company hosted the press conference, we didn't hear a thing about games for Windows phone or Windows PC gaming, a fact that wasn't missed by Xbox head Phil Spencer.

"I'm head of gaming at Microsoft," Spencer said. "When we're doing gaming strategy, gaming focus inside the company, that's my job. I think in a lot of ways, you could argue gaming on Windows has never been more healthy in that the biggest of the big franchises, League of Legends, World of Tanks, those things dwarf a lot of what we're doing in this console space in terms of users and monetization. They're all on PC."

But that doesn't mean they're necessarily a good fit for E3, he said.

"E3's a retail show," he said. "It's a retail show, it's a console show, so it didn't really feel like the right place for us to talk about Windows, but Windows and gaming on Windows is critical to Microsoft's success."

If E3 isn't the right place, I asked, then what is?

"Well they do these huge world championship events and they fill up arenas," he said. "I do think there could be a space there.

"For us, E3 is a console show and an Xbox show, and for us as Microsoft, Xbox is our gaming brand, and it's the thing we can fill an arena like this, we get millions of people to watch us on TV and we show our games and it's a brand that people care about."