Inside came to Xbox thanks to a phone call from Phil Spencer

Back in 2014, Inside was revealed on stage at E3 by the Xbox boss Phil Spencer himself. At the event, Spencer called the game's predecessor Limbo "one of my favourite games of all time," and apparently the praise was genuine, as Playdead co-founder Dino Patti now reveals that it was largely due to Phil Spencer's personal involvement that Inside got a short-term exclusivity deal with Microsoft.

Patti told the story to the Danish podcast Arkaden, where he also revealed that before Spencer's phone call, the studio was close to signing a deal with PlayStation.

"One of the things that was important to me was that we got as short a timed exclusivity as possible. And we got very little of that with PlayStation," Patti says. "We were presented with a good deal, and we kind of, you know, shook hands and said, 'Okay, this sounds great, we could do this.'"

But then Spencer took matters into his own hands. Dino Patti summarises the episode as follows:

"I don't know if he got wind of it somehow. I was sitting one night at eight o'clock, in my sweat pants, and then my phone rings, displaying an American number. And it's Phil Spencer from Microsoft. It was crazy!

He says: 'Listen, we need to make a deal with you, what do you want?'

And I was like, 'Well, we've actually made an okay deal...'

'No, no, no, no, you don't understand what I'm saying. I can make anything happen, what do you want?'"

In the end, the deal with Microsoft turned out to be beneficial for Playdead. Not only was Microsoft responsible for much of the game's marketing at various trade shows and conventions, but the timed exclusivity was kept very brief, as the PS4 version of Inside was released just a few months after its debut on Xbox One.