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Phil Spencer on the evolution of the Xbox brand.

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman

Stevivor sat down to speak with Phil Spencer at X019 in London late last year, and we used the opportunity to delve into the evolution of the Xbox brand under his leadership.

Stevivor: In 2016 we were talking and you’d just moved Xbox away from ‘TV, TV, TV’ to making it about Xbox One, the console. Now, I think you’ve moved away from the console to Xbox as a service. Is that accurate, and how do you rate your performance since the time we last spoke?

Phil Spencer:
The only difference I would say is I don’t really think about it as a ‘from, to’. I think we have many customers, myself included, who love playing on a console and want that experience to be awesome. We’re going to do all the work that we can to make sure we have great games that are playable there. The service is great, that the hardware is top notch and you have an amazing experience. That’s true today. It’ll be true with [Xbox Series X] next year and something we really care about.

I think what we’ve [seen] is games have become both global and somewhat persistently with you. You look at the biggest games on the planet today. It’s like a Fortnite and Minecraft or Roblox. They exist on any device that somebody picks up. It’s just listening to music or watching video. People love games and they want them with them wherever they go. So man, for us redefining how we think about Xbox, as you said, not from ‘here’s the device we want you to buy’, but rather put the gamer at the center and build the experience around them. And if it’s somebody who just wants to play on a console, only wants to play single player games only on the console, I want that to be great.

This is why I push it back a little bit on the ‘from, to’. Look at Project xCloud. Project xCloud is ‘how do we take that Xbox experience and let you move it away from the console when you’re not near the console or you’re choosing not to play there?’ But it’s not to diminish what is special about playing on your television or playing on your PC.

Stevivor: It’s like you were saying at the start of the day — you’re not trying to force anybody into a set way of playing. We have games that are like a service, like Destiny, but we also have things like Game Pass, which builds the service around it rather than the other way around.

Spencer:
That’s right. Yeah. The gamer will choose in the end; I don’t know that people pick games — I play a ton of Destiny — that they don’t necessarily pick them based on ‘is this a service-based game or single player game’. I think it’s really ‘does this game connect with me? Is this something that I want to do?’

I’m playing The Outer Worlds right now and I love the fact that it does have a beginning, middle and end. It’s kind of nice to have that in a game. I actually don’t want Destiny to end — I like running strikes endlessly over and over for hours about hours because it feels great and I can play with my friends. I want both of those [options]. I want the choice to be mine.

It is one of the things that Game Pass offers — it’s such a great collection of games and there’s kind of zero friction to somebody trying something new because it’s available in the subscription.
 

DanielsM

Banned
This guy talks a lot. Does he actually do anything outside of interviews?
Yes, sells snake oil, his favorite and best customer - Nadella. Once Nadella figures this out, its not going to be pretty, of course, Phil did buy those Xbox workers a few more years.

(btw, were almost up to the required amount of interviews and silly PR for the day, almost)

Game Pass $1, Phil trying to market game streaming as something not 10-15 years old as new... priceless. :messenger_tears_of_joy: The first question someone should ask Phil at the beginning of these mass amounts of interviews is.... Phil, what year do you think it is? :messenger_tears_of_joy:
 
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hunthunt

Banned
So sick of him, and please dont say that I say that bc im a Ps fanboy because I would hate equally any mf that its everyday in the news with zero actual news to talk about and just for boring pr shit
 

DanielsM

Banned
So sick of him, and please dont say that I say that bc im a Ps fanboy because I would hate equally any mf that its everyday in the news with zero actual news to talk about and just for boring pr shit

Well, there is a few ways to look at, these interviews will be gems in the future.

Literally, someone could make a daily blog about all the stupid nonsense... its actually quite funny. I mean you have to credit him with something... he has industrial size balls.... I mean he is marketing literally 10+ year tech as some type of new invention.


"Hey guys, we lost our way with GFWL so, we're going to shut it down and fuck all you guys over... instead of fixing it. Oh by the way we're launching another stupid ass broken store and we'll eventually only allow stupid ass UWP on it... it will be just as bad as GFWL so all you guys stupid enough to buy off of MS stores... should feel right at home. "

Years later....

"Hey guys, we know the MS Store is a broken piece of shit, we are committed to fixing"

Years later...
"Hey guys, you seen my new rad wrinkled t-shirt... rad huh? Btw, you guys still stupid enough to believe us.... we're going to fix the stupid ass broken store that the major publishers really don't want to deal with, you can believe me this time!"

Year later...
"Hey guys we didn't fix the stupid ass broken store for like the 13th year in a row, but we built a new app in addition to the other countless stupid ass apps.... so you can rent games and by pass the stupid ass store and app.... its so much easier to just release more broken ass shit than it is to fix the broken ass shit we already created. Oh by the way, it only works on Windows 10 and you better be running the latest version... peace out."
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Well, there is a few ways to look at, these interviews will be gems in the future.

Literally, someone could make a daily blog about all the stupid nonsense... its actually quite funny.


"Hey guys, we lost our way with GFWL so, we're going to shut it down and fuck all you guys over... instead of fixing it. Oh by the way we're launching another stupid ass broken store and we'll eventually only allow stupid ass UWP on it... it will be just as bad as GFWL so all you guys stupid enough to buy off of MS stores... should feel right at home. "

Years later....

"Hey guys, we know the MS Store is a broken piece of shit, we are committed to fixing"

Years later...
"Hey guys, you seen my new rad wrinkled t-shirt... rad huh? Btw, you guys still stupid enough to believe us.... we're going to fix the stupid ass broken store that the major publishers really don't want to deal with, you can believe me this time!"

Year later...
"Hey guys we didn't fix the stupid ass broken store for like the 13th year in a row, but we built a new app in addition to the other countless stupid ass apps.... so you can rent games and by pass the stupid ass store and app.... its so much easier to just release more broken ass shit than it is to fix the broken ass shit we already created. Oh by the way, it only works on Windows 10 and you better be running the latest version... peace out."
Dude, you just came back from being banned from console warrioring, why do you keep doing it?
 

DanielsM

Banned
Just all of the shit he's talking about in the interviews, yeah.

The problem is.. all he does is talk and the talk makes very little sense. You can even see it in this little interviewer... that the interview starts out confused, and for good reason.

In 2016 we were talking and you’d just moved Xbox away from ‘TV, TV, TV’ to making it about Xbox One, the console. Now, I think you’ve moved away from the console to Xbox as a service. Is that accurate, and how do you rate your performance since the time we last spoke?

Its mixed messages to such a degree that nobody even knows what Xbox is. At the end of the day its about services and really the only place they can put those services are on PC to have any growth... where nobody needs Microsoft as its an open OS. There is no reason for publishers or developers or consumers to use as its open, so unless they actually compete at a high level they fail right away which is why we had Games for Windows Live and now the Microsoft Store. One day they are talking about consoles, the next day about being on Steam.... than they don't say anything about the Microsoft Store. :messenger_tears_of_joy: All these "services" have to run through somewhere.

Without Xbox as a Hardware selling very well, its hard to envision exactly any kind of business they could have other than being a traditional publisher as they were in the 90s... because all the publishers, developers and end consumers have unlimited options and Microsoft is late to the party.

So... Phil is basically talking in riddles because once you figure out what he is talking about... than you know he is just selling Satya snakeoil.... all of this has to run through a closed eco-system.... yet this is contrary to Satya vision of pushing services to all devices, and go to the users i.e. cloud services.... enterprise is not the same as the consumer market.
 
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Bernkastel

Ask me about my fanboy energy!
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