Phil Spencer thinks video games have caught up to movies and TV shows when it comes to storytelling

We've said it for a long time now, but the age of video game adaptations is well and truly upon us. Releases like The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Five Nights at Freddy's, and A Minecraft Movie have shown by the metric of box office cash that there is money to be made in video game adaptations.

To Xbox boss Phil Spencer, this proves that video games have caught up with movies and TV when it comes to the capability of their storytelling. "I would say for a long time, I think there was a certain amount of envy in the video game space when looking at movies and television," he told Variety in a recent interview. "Of their storytelling capability, the worlds that they had built...I'm very proud of the fact that the games industry is now being seen as a place where really deep stories and characters are told. Deep enough that they can be realized in a different medium, through a movie or a television show."

"I think movies went through books, when you think about things like "Lord of the Rings," and then they kind of moved into comics with the whole Marvel and "Batman," all of this. And you really see that industry turning its view to video games, because they have a large community, and the stories are actually rich and deep enough. And I love that," he continued. Spencer also cites The Last of Us as well as Indiana Jones and the Great Circle as key examples of great storytelling in games.

Games as a storytelling medium have often been looked down upon compared to movies and TV shows, but as technology has improved, it has become clearer that they can tell a great story just as any other medium can. We'll have to see whether this age of adaptation affects the future of gaming, as titles could look to prioritise a story that's good enough to be in a movie or TV show. That is of course just speculation, but the future seems interesting for games and spin-offs from them.