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In defense of Phil Spencer - he is not the problem with Xbox

Flutta

Flutta

Banned
dont care lol GIF
 
DaGwaphics

DaGwaphics

Member
feynoob said:
The crack started when they stopped their investment with the platform during OG Xbox.

They bought rare and Bungie. Had they gone that route, Xbox would have been in a different limelight.
Click to expand...

Some truth to that for sure. If they had chosen to invest in studios rather than the third-party exclusives they would have had better output over the years. Though the Sega deal was definitely worth while in the beginning.

They have the studios now, they just need to get the content out on a consistent basis in a finished state. Unfortunately, most of the studios they bought had either just released a project or finished releasing a multi-plat project in the next year or so. With how long it takes to make games now that creates a situation where they still had the bad drought last year. Excited to see what they have on tap this year.
 
MasterCornholio

MasterCornholio

Member
Honest question.

After the last interview do people want Phil to continue leading Xbox?

Seems like he's really burnt out and some change might be welcome for the brand.
 
Azelover

Azelover

Titanic was called the Ship of Dreams, and it was. It really was.
Ok. I'm not gonna read it all, I just can't. But on the subject of Phil Spencer. Being honest about your position, no matter how negative, is the first step toward change.

If as a leader all you say is "we are doing great" especially when you aren't, things will never change.
 
Danjin44

Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
I'm sorry I just dont give fuck about CEOs for Nintendo, Sony and Xbox, I dont get your guys obsession with them. THE ONLY thing that matter is games, I buy any system as long as they give me the games I want.

supply and demand.....thats as far as my relationship goes when it comes to these companies and their CEOs......If you expect me to feel bad for CEOs I'm sorry I dont, they make more money than most people.
 
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Stare-Bear

Stare-Bear

Banned
You conveniently left out that Phil was head of game studios before becoming head of Xbone.

So imagine if he had managed to put out some banging first party titles that showed off the Kinect 2.0. But there was nothing.

There was nothing with the Xbox One X, nothing with the Series X. If they hadn’t bought Zenimax they wouldn’t have anything in 2023.
 
March Climber

March Climber

Member
Anyone who actually watched the interview or anyone who's worked in a large company should know this. Phil is too busy with much larger dealings to be personally playtesting a video game. Bethesda is an entirely different company under their umbrella with their own massive hierarchy. He stated that he was shown a vertical slice of Redfall and was told from the higher ups at Bethesda that it was in a good state and ready to go.

This means he has an issue where the people he's relying on for honest opinions are all Yes men. It means that from development, to playtesting, to demonstration, to Bethesda management, to Bethesda upper management, to Bethesda VP and CEO, to then Xbox Management, to Xbox Upper Management, to finally Phil Spencer, not a single individual in this extremely long chain of telephone reported to him that the game wasn't ready.

Now he has to be the face of that failure and fall on the sword for an issue that lies way below his position. Now he has to start setting aside his own work just to check out the work of another set of people who aren't getting work done properly. If anyone here has ever been in that position where you're having to do that, or at worst do the work for that other person who's underperforming, it freaking sucks. A lot.
 
Jinzo Prime

Jinzo Prime

Member
LavitzSlambert said:
Seeing a lot of Phil bashing lately due to unrest within the Xbox fanbase and the flop of Redfall seen by fan lads as an opportunity to dunk on him. The truth is that without Phil’s efforts over the past 10 years, there wouldn’t even be an Xbox Game Studios. That’s not to say he should be immune to criticism, but the amount and severity of it is overblown. Make no mistake, I am no stan for Phil. This is coming from someone who sees absolutely no point to owning an Xbox since the 360 and who finds PS+ Extra better than Game Pass. Regardless, the amount and kind of criticism being thrown his way is misguided.


Let’s start by looking at Microsoft as a company and their relationship with Xbox Game Studios, this is key because its ultimately what Phil is beholden to in terms of budget and strategy.


People on this board don’t seem to understand what kind of company Microsoft is and what their relationship with gaming is. Microsoft is fundamentally a middle man “platform” company first and foremost. They began this way and it’s their core competency. From Windows to Office, Azure, etc, they almost never make the best software (except for Excel). The reason they are so successful is because they provide a platform that does everything, even if they don’t do it exceptionally well. They are a tech company first, not a toy company like Nintendo, not an electronics or entertainment company like Sony.


It doesn’t matter to Microsoft as a whole if Xbox is in third place so long as they are profitable. And before someone comes in to assert their thesis on their last 10 income statements - it doesn’t matter how much money Xbox has lost Microsoft. Microsoft sees that as an acceptable cost of acquiring market share for future profits. They are so wildly successful that it means nothing, they’re fine with taking a hit for several years in order to build their moat. In particular right now Microsoft’s focus under Nadella is to become THE big player in the SaaS and PaaS markets. They understand services are the way to future profitability in their core markets, and they have taken this approach with the Xbox division too.


Now take a look at this, the history of Microsoft’s game studio:

en.m.wikipedia.org

Xbox Game Studios - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org


Xbox Games Studios has historically been a publisher, first and foremost, NOT a development studio. Look at the history and you’ll see how few games have been developed by already-in-house Microsoft teams. Their strategy has ALWAYS been to acquire existing development studios and fold their teams in under the Microsoft brand, acting as a publisher. Take a couple minutes to skim through that wiki, you will see each of their early big franchises like Flight Simulator, MechWarrior, Halo, and Fable were all buyouts of existing teams. With the exception of Forza, almost all of these dev teams are no longer operating under Microsoft (or at all) with much of the institutional knowledge gone elsewhere.


You’ll see that the existing dev teams in XGS today are almost all new acquisitions from the past few years, or have have enough turnover and change to consider themselves brand new teams. Furthermore, these acquisitions historically have been run as independent game shops and were Microsoft brand in name only. Traditionally this is how Microsoft operated their software company acquisitions. That is changing, as of very recently (COVID), and Matt Booty has been transparent about this in a podcast interview with Friends Per Second:




That change looks to be a stronger partnership between XGS and among its dev teams - much like the models that have been in place at Sony and Nintendo for a long time, and often cited as one of the biggest benefits to working with PlayStation from small dev teams - access to their resources and guidance. A change so recent will obviously take time to see the effects of.


Last, we look at Phil Spencer and Xbox division itself. Nadella became CEO in 2014, got rid of Mattrick and put Phil as head of Xbox. Considering the amount of damage already done, Phil’s first major task was to stop the bleeding and return to profitability. Here lies the big disconnect I see on this forum, in that “Phil has had 10 years to fix this and he has failed!” It’s quite the opposite, especially considering just how dominant Sony has been, and Nintendo since 2017.


What people also forget (or never knew to begin with) is that Phil was also responsible for Groove Music, Movies and TV, and Xbox Entertainment Studios. His focus was not solely on gaming! In fact, guess who Phil’s boss was - it was Terry Myerson, the VP of Operating Systems, who at the time was in charge of Windows, Windows Phone, and Xbox. In case you didn’t know, Windows was undergoing a huge transformation due to Nadella’s company-wide shift to cloud services and away from their traditional OS market. We also know what happened to Windows Phone. So in 2014 Xbox was neither the focus of Phil’s boss, nor the sole focus of Phil himself.


Still, within Phil’s first year as Xbox head, they acquired notable IPs like Gears and Minecraft (they bought Mojang entirely). I don’t need to explain how big of a win that was in terms of bringing money into Xbox. They also gave Gears to The Coalition, shut down Xbox Entertainment Studios, and had to contend with the unmitigated disaster Xbox One Phil immediately inherited. They also decided to reveal Ori and the Blind Forest, while it was an indie game it had the backing of Xbox as publisher which helped make the game a huge success (which it surpassed in its follow up, Will of the Wisps).


It took Microsoft until 2017 to consider Xbox an important part of their future strategy, likely due to the company’s pivot toward cloud computing and services with Game Pass. Finally Phil was promoted to executive VP and given a seat at the table, reporting directly to CEO Nadella and with Matt Booty from Mojang filling the role of head of XGS development. This is probably the most important part in this post, because it’s clear that until 2017 Xbox was not given clout by Microsoft. Given the company’s history and organizational structure, I am not surprised it's taking a long time to turn Xbox around. 2017 and beyond is the period where Phil actually has a real voice and pull within Microsoft as a whole, and what he should be judged for is overall direction of Xbox. Matt Booty is in the hotseat in terms of first-party output, which has been the biggest criticism of Xbox as a platform.


Still, if you look at what Xbox has done during this timeframe, you will see a lot of positives. Aside from the name, Xbox Series X is great hardware and has excellent features. Game Pass has been wildly successful. Although I don't like the precedent set due to the scope of industry consolidation, Microsoft's acquisitions of Zenimax and their pending Activision-Blizzard look to be huge positives for the Xbox brand. I haven't played it but from what I understand, critically, Halo Infinite's single player campaign was great and finally has the series back on track. Forza Horizon 5 was GOTY material. These are all signs that what Xbox is doing under Phil is working. Microsoft is happy with the results as Phil just got promoted to CEO of Xbox in 2022 and is now calling all of the shots for Microsoft's gaming segment with minimal oversight from Nadella.


I will close with some legitimate criticisms of Phil and speculation about why I suspect Phil is not solely to blame:


1. Xbox Series S resulted in a worse experience overall for gamers by holding back top performance of Series X games.

While it's not the best outcome for a gamer who wants the full next gen experience, it probably is the best move for Xbox and its existing userbase. Even with a bunch of great exclusives, it's going to be hard for Xbox's comeback against Nintendo and Sony arguably at their peak of success. The $500 Series X is a huge ask even of existing Xbox fans, and Phil seems fine making a sacrifice on the "full potential" not being realized in exchange for more people being able to experience games. Expanded audience over high end experience, it's as simple as that, and no surprise considering the Game Pass subscription model they are pushing.


2. Phil allowed Halo Infinite to be rushed and turn into a flop.

I couldn't agree more. Considering Phil as a gamer himself would be opposed to how this was handled, I have to think this was not his decision. Halo was Microsoft's trump card and a way to rekindle the spark for Xbox this generation, and Phil knew it had to be good. Considering all the tales of its troubled development, it sounds like 343 themselves were largely to blame. Considering how pivotal it was to the success of the console, I suspect the major delay was the middle ground Phil was able to negotiate. Microsoft as a whole needed it to get out the door and unfortunately even with the extra time that was bought, it wasn't enough to save the game.


3. It was dumb to allow Redfall to release in such a state.

Yeah with his immediate backpedal it's hard to see the case of why Phil decided to do this. Perhaps XGS is still allowing decisions to be made by the teams themselves, and maybe that is the wrong answer, in which Phil should still be criticized. But considering how little fun people are saying they have outside of the technical issues, I wonder if the game is just nothing special. In that case maybe Phil did the right thing in releasing when it did, in the state it did, to get it out of the way before summer. It's too soon to know if this was the right call but still disappointing how this turned out.


4. Phil's recent quote "We lost the biggest console generation there is to lose so when we build on Xbox, we want it to feel awesome. So if we focused on great games, that doesn't mean we'll win the console race".

Missing the context of which Phil said this, which was talking about how the PS4/XBO generation built up gamers' digital libraries and how even releasing excellent games would not necessarily drive Xbox console sales. I don't like this, and I disagree - history has shown a couple superstar games can sell a platform. Since 2017, Microsoft's strategy to sell their platform (really just Game Pass) has been top priority. They are not just trying to make excellent games, a big focus is on the experience with their platform. I see their point, look at the Switch. An enormous hit, and you've seen many people's reactions that if Nintendo's next console doesn't support the libraries they built up or have feature parity, they're going to "wait and see" rather than buy into Nintendo's ecosystem. Seems to be Microsoft as a whole's stance and the whole point of their Windows and Azure offerings.


5. Phil isn't doing a good job with Microsoft first party output.

I agree here, and I don't think this is something Phil personally excels at. He is very good at running the business as a whole and being gamer focused, he understands the market and the platform. He just isn't getting it done managing XGS the way Nintendo and Sony are able to. Matt Booty was put in this position in 2018, and Phil is responsible for that choice. At the same time I'm not sure if there has been enough time to see the fruits of this labor, and the way XGS is working with the dev teams has been changing too. Like Phil has stated many times, it's like they're building a dev studio from the ground up.


TL;DR Phil Spencer is not infallible but he is good for Microsoft, good for gamers, and good for the industry. Xbox's problems are deeply rooted in the way Microsoft operates its business, and how they viewed their gaming division until 2017. Xbox has been moving in a positive direction because of Phil's efforts and while he bares responsibility for the lackluster first-party output, the criticism being thrown at him might be better directed at Matt Booty and/or Microsoft as a whole.
Click to expand...


I actually read your post OP, and gave you a like based on your reasonable assessment of the issue. However, I disagree with your conclusions.

Halo has been an internal Xbox studio since 2010 and in 2017, Phil certainly had the opportunity to shape the direction of the series following the fan backlash against Halo 5, which was released in 2015. While his focus may have been split across many teams and projects, Halo was the crown jewel of Xbox and deserved more attention from its leader.

People forget that Iwata died in 2015 and Kimishima was not an heir apparent, but he still led Nintendo to its strongest performing platform in company history. Obviously, the success of the Switch can be attributed to many at Nintendo, but Kimishima had to oversee and sign-off on many decisions in that 2 years between Iwata's death and the launch of the Switch. Phil is not blameless in the decision-making process at Xbox. If you are at the top, your every move effects the brand.
 
ShadowkillXNA

ShadowkillXNA

Member
LavitzSlambert said:
Seeing a lot of Phil bashing lately due to unrest within the Xbox fanbase and the flop of Redfall seen by fan lads as an opportunity to dunk on him. The truth is that without Phil’s efforts over the past 10 years, there wouldn’t even be an Xbox Game Studios. That’s not to say he should be immune to criticism, but the amount and severity of it is overblown. Make no mistake, I am no stan for Phil. This is coming from someone who sees absolutely no point to owning an Xbox since the 360 and who finds PS+ Extra better than Game Pass. Regardless, the amount and kind of criticism being thrown his way is misguided.


Let’s start by looking at Microsoft as a company and their relationship with Xbox Game Studios, this is key because its ultimately what Phil is beholden to in terms of budget and strategy.


People on this board don’t seem to understand what kind of company Microsoft is and what their relationship with gaming is. Microsoft is fundamentally a middle man “platform” company first and foremost. They began this way and it’s their core competency. From Windows to Office, Azure, etc, they almost never make the best software (except for Excel). The reason they are so successful is because they provide a platform that does everything, even if they don’t do it exceptionally well. They are a tech company first, not a toy company like Nintendo, not an electronics or entertainment company like Sony.


It doesn’t matter to Microsoft as a whole if Xbox is in third place so long as they are profitable. And before someone comes in to assert their thesis on their last 10 income statements - it doesn’t matter how much money Xbox has lost Microsoft. Microsoft sees that as an acceptable cost of acquiring market share for future profits. They are so wildly successful that it means nothing, they’re fine with taking a hit for several years in order to build their moat. In particular right now Microsoft’s focus under Nadella is to become THE big player in the SaaS and PaaS markets. They understand services are the way to future profitability in their core markets, and they have taken this approach with the Xbox division too.


Now take a look at this, the history of Microsoft’s game studio:

en.m.wikipedia.org

Xbox Game Studios - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org


Xbox Games Studios has historically been a publisher, first and foremost, NOT a development studio. Look at the history and you’ll see how few games have been developed by already-in-house Microsoft teams. Their strategy has ALWAYS been to acquire existing development studios and fold their teams in under the Microsoft brand, acting as a publisher. Take a couple minutes to skim through that wiki, you will see each of their early big franchises like Flight Simulator, MechWarrior, Halo, and Fable were all buyouts of existing teams. With the exception of Forza, almost all of these dev teams are no longer operating under Microsoft (or at all) with much of the institutional knowledge gone elsewhere.


You’ll see that the existing dev teams in XGS today are almost all new acquisitions from the past few years, or have have enough turnover and change to consider themselves brand new teams. Furthermore, these acquisitions historically have been run as independent game shops and were Microsoft brand in name only. Traditionally this is how Microsoft operated their software company acquisitions. That is changing, as of very recently (COVID), and Matt Booty has been transparent about this in a podcast interview with Friends Per Second:




That change looks to be a stronger partnership between XGS and among its dev teams - much like the models that have been in place at Sony and Nintendo for a long time, and often cited as one of the biggest benefits to working with PlayStation from small dev teams - access to their resources and guidance. A change so recent will obviously take time to see the effects of.


Last, we look at Phil Spencer and Xbox division itself. Nadella became CEO in 2014, got rid of Mattrick and put Phil as head of Xbox. Considering the amount of damage already done, Phil’s first major task was to stop the bleeding and return to profitability. Here lies the big disconnect I see on this forum, in that “Phil has had 10 years to fix this and he has failed!” It’s quite the opposite, especially considering just how dominant Sony has been, and Nintendo since 2017.


What people also forget (or never knew to begin with) is that Phil was also responsible for Groove Music, Movies and TV, and Xbox Entertainment Studios. His focus was not solely on gaming! In fact, guess who Phil’s boss was - it was Terry Myerson, the VP of Operating Systems, who at the time was in charge of Windows, Windows Phone, and Xbox. In case you didn’t know, Windows was undergoing a huge transformation due to Nadella’s company-wide shift to cloud services and away from their traditional OS market. We also know what happened to Windows Phone. So in 2014 Xbox was neither the focus of Phil’s boss, nor the sole focus of Phil himself.


Still, within Phil’s first year as Xbox head, they acquired notable IPs like Gears and Minecraft (they bought Mojang entirely). I don’t need to explain how big of a win that was in terms of bringing money into Xbox. They also gave Gears to The Coalition, shut down Xbox Entertainment Studios, and had to contend with the unmitigated disaster Xbox One Phil immediately inherited. They also decided to reveal Ori and the Blind Forest, while it was an indie game it had the backing of Xbox as publisher which helped make the game a huge success (which it surpassed in its follow up, Will of the Wisps).


It took Microsoft until 2017 to consider Xbox an important part of their future strategy, likely due to the company’s pivot toward cloud computing and services with Game Pass. Finally Phil was promoted to executive VP and given a seat at the table, reporting directly to CEO Nadella and with Matt Booty from Mojang filling the role of head of XGS development. This is probably the most important part in this post, because it’s clear that until 2017 Xbox was not given clout by Microsoft. Given the company’s history and organizational structure, I am not surprised it's taking a long time to turn Xbox around. 2017 and beyond is the period where Phil actually has a real voice and pull within Microsoft as a whole, and what he should be judged for is overall direction of Xbox. Matt Booty is in the hotseat in terms of first-party output, which has been the biggest criticism of Xbox as a platform.


Still, if you look at what Xbox has done during this timeframe, you will see a lot of positives. Aside from the name, Xbox Series X is great hardware and has excellent features. Game Pass has been wildly successful. Although I don't like the precedent set due to the scope of industry consolidation, Microsoft's acquisitions of Zenimax and their pending Activision-Blizzard look to be huge positives for the Xbox brand. I haven't played it but from what I understand, critically, Halo Infinite's single player campaign was great and finally has the series back on track. Forza Horizon 5 was GOTY material. These are all signs that what Xbox is doing under Phil is working. Microsoft is happy with the results as Phil just got promoted to CEO of Xbox in 2022 and is now calling all of the shots for Microsoft's gaming segment with minimal oversight from Nadella.


I will close with some legitimate criticisms of Phil and speculation about why I suspect Phil is not solely to blame:


1. Xbox Series S resulted in a worse experience overall for gamers by holding back top performance of Series X games.

While it's not the best outcome for a gamer who wants the full next gen experience, it probably is the best move for Xbox and its existing userbase. Even with a bunch of great exclusives, it's going to be hard for Xbox's comeback against Nintendo and Sony arguably at their peak of success. The $500 Series X is a huge ask even of existing Xbox fans, and Phil seems fine making a sacrifice on the "full potential" not being realized in exchange for more people being able to experience games. Expanded audience over high end experience, it's as simple as that, and no surprise considering the Game Pass subscription model they are pushing.


2. Phil allowed Halo Infinite to be rushed and turn into a flop.

I couldn't agree more. Considering Phil as a gamer himself would be opposed to how this was handled, I have to think this was not his decision. Halo was Microsoft's trump card and a way to rekindle the spark for Xbox this generation, and Phil knew it had to be good. Considering all the tales of its troubled development, it sounds like 343 themselves were largely to blame. Considering how pivotal it was to the success of the console, I suspect the major delay was the middle ground Phil was able to negotiate. Microsoft as a whole needed it to get out the door and unfortunately even with the extra time that was bought, it wasn't enough to save the game.


3. It was dumb to allow Redfall to release in such a state.

Yeah with his immediate backpedal it's hard to see the case of why Phil decided to do this. Perhaps XGS is still allowing decisions to be made by the teams themselves, and maybe that is the wrong answer, in which Phil should still be criticized. But considering how little fun people are saying they have outside of the technical issues, I wonder if the game is just nothing special. In that case maybe Phil did the right thing in releasing when it did, in the state it did, to get it out of the way before summer. It's too soon to know if this was the right call but still disappointing how this turned out.


4. Phil's recent quote "We lost the biggest console generation there is to lose so when we build on Xbox, we want it to feel awesome. So if we focused on great games, that doesn't mean we'll win the console race".

Missing the context of which Phil said this, which was talking about how the PS4/XBO generation built up gamers' digital libraries and how even releasing excellent games would not necessarily drive Xbox console sales. I don't like this, and I disagree - history has shown a couple superstar games can sell a platform. Since 2017, Microsoft's strategy to sell their platform (really just Game Pass) has been top priority. They are not just trying to make excellent games, a big focus is on the experience with their platform. I see their point, look at the Switch. An enormous hit, and you've seen many people's reactions that if Nintendo's next console doesn't support the libraries they built up or have feature parity, they're going to "wait and see" rather than buy into Nintendo's ecosystem. Seems to be Microsoft as a whole's stance and the whole point of their Windows and Azure offerings.


5. Phil isn't doing a good job with Microsoft first party output.

I agree here, and I don't think this is something Phil personally excels at. He is very good at running the business as a whole and being gamer focused, he understands the market and the platform. He just isn't getting it done managing XGS the way Nintendo and Sony are able to. Matt Booty was put in this position in 2018, and Phil is responsible for that choice. At the same time I'm not sure if there has been enough time to see the fruits of this labor, and the way XGS is working with the dev teams has been changing too. Like Phil has stated many times, it's like they're building a dev studio from the ground up.


TL;DR Phil Spencer is not infallible but he is good for Microsoft, good for gamers, and good for the industry. Xbox's problems are deeply rooted in the way Microsoft operates its business, and how they viewed their gaming division until 2017. Xbox has been moving in a positive direction because of Phil's efforts and while he bares responsibility for the lackluster first-party output, the criticism being thrown at him might be better directed at Matt Booty and/or Microsoft as a whole.
Click to expand...

He's been in charge since what 2014? And wasn't he in charge of xbox's first party the last few years of the xbox 360 generation? You know, when xbox stopped giving a shit about their first party output when they got infatuated with kinect quick cash?
And they've owned Bethesda for over two years now, the deal closed in spring 2021. They've had time and spencer has had that time to check on them.
He's the head of the xbox division, it's on his underlings and him, and he's responsible for ensuring they are doing they're jobs properly and for making sure their studios are running smoothly.
 
TexMex

TexMex

Member
Of course no one person is THE problem with Xbox. And he's a good, well spoken, likeable face of the brand. But he is in charge, so he does have to take a large portion of the responsibility. And he does, which is refreshing to see. But the problem is that while he always says the right things, and has for many years, those never result in measurable action either. He's a great talker, but not the best manager of his studios.
 
Jerm411

Jerm411

Member
TexMex said:
Of course no one person is THE problem with Xbox. And he's a good, well spoken, likeable face of the brand. But he is in charge, so he does have to take a large portion of the responsibility. And he does, which is refreshing to see. But the problem is that while he always says the right things, and has for many years, those never result in measurable action either. He's a great talker, but not the best manager of his studios.
Click to expand...
One of their biggest problems too is that like in the fandom, all the people below him worship him….it creates a hive mind where no one will speak up, push back, etc.

Take any Phil, Sarah Bond or Matt Booty quote and take the names off and they ALL sound the exact same.

The brand needs a fresh voice in the worst way imaginable…
 
night13x

night13x

Member
DON'T WORRY GUYS BELIEVE IN UNCLE PHIL!!!

HE PROMISED 2023 LINE UP WILL BE THE STRONGEST IT HAS EVER BEEN!! cause he doesn't make the same statement each and every year only to fall flat on his face.

I skimmed through the topic and wasn't going to read that mountain of text, but phil is part of the problem, but not the only problem with xbox.
 
Havoc2049

Havoc2049

Member
Microsoft's wounds in gaming are self inflicted. They built up a great PC and Xbox portfolio of studios and games and then decided to close down half of them about 3/4 of the way through the X360 generation. They have been playing playing catch up ever since and every time it seems like they are about to turn the corner, they always release a high profile game that is jacked up and doesn't meet expectations.
 
SJRB

SJRB

Gold Member
Pop said:
Oh ya sure sure...

Just give ol Phil more breaks and ten more years. All praise Phil
Click to expand...

Don't forget to give him another 200 billion dollars because buying every studio under the sun automatically solves your problems.
 
  • Fire
Reactions: Pop
S

SegaShack

Member
Are you new to Phil? He has had 10 years of promises without the delivery.

Every year he will say it's all about the games. The stuff they announce sadly ends up cancelled (Scalebound, Fable Legends, Phantom Dust) or as a poor product (Project Spark, Halo Infinite, Crackdown 3).

Yes you can argue that in a large organization nothing boils down to one person, but in this case it literally is his job to be accountable for Xbox.

I'm not a fanboy either, I want all 3 platforms to be awesome as it means more great games. It seemed like after 2014 Xbox stopped caring.
 
Last edited:
THE DUCK

THE DUCK

voted poster of the decade by bots
The irony is there is pressure to release games now yet they probably need a bit extra time for polish.

I agree with this post overall, even though everything isn't sunshine and roses, I think Phil and the direction of xbox is the right one.

As to infinite, I think the huge map/open world kind of doomed it from the start. It seemed to divert thier attention away from how a story is still important......check that, not just story, variance, exploration (that isn't the same), more varied interactions overall. It was like "squirrell". The team seemed skilled (you could tell by the excellent halo gunplay) but was distracted. I personally thought it was still very good and reviews flush that out as well. (Single player wise)
 
RoboFu

RoboFu

One of the green rats
It's sooo simple.. all they need to do is release a string on Hi Fi Rush caliber games in a row with some of them being top sellers. Super Easy...
🤣
 
Phase

Phase

Member
RoboFu said:
It's sooo simple.. all they need to do is release a string on Hi Fi Rush caliber games in a row with some of them being top sellers. Super Easy...
🤣
Click to expand...
Yep, it's been said already but it's all about the games. You have great games and they will come.
 
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