Phil Spencer and the Battle for Xbox’s Soul

Has the rapid growth of Xbox made the ship too heavy? Following the closures of Tango Gameworks, Arkane Austin, and Roundhouse, we explore what the future of Xbox could look like.

[LG_Fox_Brazil]

This ship was never meant to sail, this ship was made from the get go to sink as fast as possible. It almost feels that they want to lower the standards of quality in the industry so that they can fit in

[rlow1]

I disagree, Xbox from the get go innovated and changed the industry. They did a lot of firsts and standardized a lot of others. It wasn’t till the beginning of the Xbox1 era that things started to go south.

[Stevonidas]

Yep, although I’d argue it started going to shit when they tried to hock Kinect on their audience instead of continuing to invest in their studios and IPs. 2001-2010 Xbox was peak gaming, though.

[rlow1]

@Stevonidas
I agree they never should have focused on it after the 360 era. But you do have to remember they were faked out by the huge volumes of Kinects sold. To quote info on Wikipedia, “Project Natal, It was first released on November 4, 2010, and would go on to sell eight million units in its first 60 days of availability.” So if your Xbox and see these huge sales on a peripheral where are you going to put some money? Criticism in hindsight is worthless…..if only we could all see our future. In other wards they had no way of knowing. Plus they had engagement numbers and a lot of signs pointed to people wanting it.

Their biggest mistake wasn’t the Kinect, but unlike Sony after the PS3 debacle. They didn’t double on down on exclusive good games. The other huge mistake was letting Call of Duty go to Sony.

[XiNatsuDragnel]

Xbox rn is sinking.

[Hedstrom]

Phil wants Xbox to be as soulless as him!

[Tacoboto]

Xbox has no soul and Phil has no confidence, and it's impossible to say either do when they killed Tango and Arkane Austin.

Everything they've said since has only made them look worse to a point that they're actually less competent than Embracer.

[Markdn]

Whe you release something like the series S and expect it not to hurt your business model, and developers have to have parity with games. Then you know Microsoft don't care. Series s is the final nail that broke developers,

[RNTody]

Xbox has not had a soul since the reveal of the Xbox One. All Phil Spencer managed to do was recover goodwill that Mattrick and his team left on the execution wall, but in ten years I can applaud nothing he has done other than backwards compatibility and legacy gaming, and I can't point to what the identity or "soul" of Xbox is under him. All I can see is his corporate appetite to buy up and tarnish the industry for maximum return, and his push to make Xbox unnecessary as a console as long as you use their services somewhere else. He's a good man for business, he is rubbish at what makes a gaming console have a soul and passionate games. So, more or less a perfect match for Microsoft.

[rlow1]

I agree with a lot of what you’ve said about him. I believe he is passionate about games but at the same time he’s a Windows guy and never seemed to understand the type of games people wanted.

What I find interesting is that MS CEO was in charge of the server division before he took over. When Don left and Phil took over there was a lot of internal talk about dumping the brand completely. My suspicion is Phil convinced Satya of keeping the brand alive with the promise of turning it into a subscription service down the road. Thus driving business to MS servers.

[RNTody]

I think you're onto something. It's not unusual that Phil has mentioned publicly that they lost the generation at the Xbox One era and lamented that people built their digital libraries at that time and are unlikely to swap consoles. That's just the excuse, because we can return back to the 360 and PS3 era where Sony was a year behind and full of mistakes and look at the recovery thereafter. Microsoft did nothing the entire Xbox One generation to promote a recovery, there's not one noteworthy new IP (games like Quantum Break didn't get the traction needed) and most of their core IP began a decline except for Forza, which only reduced quality now with its latest release.

Phil Spencer to me is a guy who can appreciate a good joke but can't come up with any himself. So yes, I believe he does like games, and he certainly plays them, but he is completely out of touch with what the market wants and he has no creative vision. He's very much in touch with monetisation and his shareholders. Hence my comment that he's an excellent CEO but he's terrible for gaming and creativity. A game like Scalebound, or Stellar Blade, or Dreams, or Death Stranding or Hi Fi Rush, or a reinvention of a franchise like God of War or whatever else would not flourish or be greenlit under Xbox. They have no appetite or vision for it.

People will read my comment history and see me as a typical Sony fanboy, but I'm actually passionate about gaming and the industry and hate what Microsoft is doing to it. In the PS4 era, believe it or not I bought an Xbox One a year after my PS4 because I didn't want to miss out on any games. I ended up selling the Xbox One down the road because I had absolutely nothing other than Sunset Overdrive and aside from being able to talk to my Xbox to turn it on, it had no value over my PS4.

In the current era, I have a PS5 and a gaming PC. It remains the best combination to those who can afford it, if you're not passionate about Nintendo's games. I love Nintendo, but I'm more into games Fire Emblem than their tranditional games, with the exception being Breath of the Wild.

Microsoft can offer me as much Game Pass or acquisitions as they want, it matters nothing. All I give a crap about is playing good games and seeing developers grow, like Supergiant or Insomniac or Housemarque or Naughty Dog or Sucker Punch or Guerrilla or countless others.

[gold_drake]

what soul exactly?