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(IGN) Phil Spencer and the Battle for Xbox’s Soul
- Thread starter XXL
- Start date
reinking
Gold Member
I have been separating out Microsoft Gaming ever since Phil got promoted. I took that promotion to mean that MS has lost confidence with Xbox as the lead gaming platform and started making changes to ensure it doesn't take their entire investment into the gaming market with it. I do believe they still want the Xbox brand but not as their lead gaming platform. The collapse of not just Xbox, but Game Pass, seems to be accelerating (maybe it is just all of the negative news lately). I hope that does not cause them to change plans and cancel the next Xbox console. I do want to see them give it one more go. Plus, I am curious how a true premium console will compete with PC gaming.
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gow3isben
Member
Just put Steve Balmer in charge.
Not sure he'd want it considering his net worth is probably over a 100 billion dollars lol
Touch fuzZy. get BizZay
Member
nice title
Killjoy-NL
Gold Member
semiconscious
Member
ShaiKhulud1989
Gold Member
It's been 10 years of mass media inventing the eleborate excuses for Phil's inaptitude. Terrific sight to behold, really.
Yet media hated Ryan, who in hindsight turned out to be both the harsh prophet and actually a good businessman.
How the turntables.
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Darkness_Arises
Member
Atleast Mattrick delivered some launch exclusives for the Xbone, what has Phil done except for making excuses and devaluing games? Ryan is nowhere near as inept as these 2 idiots (Phil and Don). He might not be a gamer and he might be socially awkward, but he was competent enough to run a profitable business.
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ShaiKhulud1989
Gold Member
Time has shown us that Don was vilified for TV, but was actually good ad bringing some games to the platform. At least Xbox One launched with a diverse and vibrant line-up like Sunset Overdrive, Forza Motorsport 5, Forza Horizon 2, D4, Project Spark, Titanfall, some Kinect fluff and myriad of other titles I don't have a clear timeline in my head to mention. No wonder it sold on par with PS4 in it's first year because Sony kinda fumbled the launch lineup a bit (error they fixed with PS5, IMO).
Now compare it with launches under Our Lord and Saviour Phil. Both One X and Series launched without any semblance of lineup or at least a tech showpiece. This is a joke of a leadership.
Alan Wake
Member
I have no doubt this i coming from upstairs. But then again, wouldn't the Xbox leadership have expected it? If you grow this quickly, and not organically by actually selling more games and consoles and expanding the business that way but by massive acquisitions, do you really think the Microsoft leadership will leave you alone? Xbox is a bigger part of the pie now.
I can't help but think that the ABK acquisition was unnecessary. They already had Bethesda, Ninja Theory, InXile, Compulsion and Playground added. More than enough to produce a steady flow of games if you also get third parties to support your platform. They should've stopped there, consolidated it all and moved on. But evidently they couldn't even handle that, and yet decided to grow even bigger?
I can't help but think that the ABK acquisition was unnecessary. They already had Bethesda, Ninja Theory, InXile, Compulsion and Playground added. More than enough to produce a steady flow of games if you also get third parties to support your platform. They should've stopped there, consolidated it all and moved on. But evidently they couldn't even handle that, and yet decided to grow even bigger?
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DenchDeckard
Moderated wildly
Sell Xbox to Corsair....
TwiztidElf
Gold Member
Interesting that only 2 weeks ago Peter Moore was talking about how he and Robbie Bach made a specific effort to distance Xbox from MS with Bills blessing.
Coulomb_Barrier
Member
Astounding, 10 years and overseeing $90 billion in spending and any Xbox problems are still not Spencer's fault. The defence of him was already fucking ludicrous a few years ago when apparently he wasn't responsible for Series' tools and games being not ready for launch. Now, it's like collective mania from the Xbox faithful like the author here.
Cyberpunkd
Member
Drama gets you clicks.
PropellerEar
Member
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phaedrus
Member
"Phil, darling, I'm not gonna hurt you. I'm just gonna bash your brains in. I'm gonna bash 'em right the fuck in!"
Alan Wake
Member
Unlike the Xbox leadership of today, Moore and his team knew perfectly what they were doing. And it worked.
CosmicComet
Member
Xbox collectively never had a soul.
Most soulless game platform ever.
It just coincidentally had a few banger games throughout it's lifetime, but the executives themselves never gave a fuck about gaming.
Most soulless game platform ever.
It just coincidentally had a few banger games throughout it's lifetime, but the executives themselves never gave a fuck about gaming.
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simpatico
Member
They've burnt every ounce of goodwill created by Xbox and Xbox 360. Hell I'd say they're in the negative. In hindsight, OG Xbox did better than anyone could have expected in terms of creating a brand. Halo, several other cool first party games and superior versions of multiplat titles (Max Payne, FEAR, sports games, Half Life etc). This continued into Xbox 360 and the online services weren't even comparable. Xbox Live set the standard for online console gaming. The amount of human effort it took to undo that work cannot be overlooked. If you tried to intentionally sink the brand, I think it would be hard to match what they achieved on accident.
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Bert Big Balls
Member
DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERSJust put Steve Balmer in charge.
SEGAvangelist
Member
Won't read based on the dramatic headline.
eerik9000
Member
False. That piece of shit doesn't actually cool anything.
Xbox Series X Replica Mini Fridge review | CHOICE
Is it game on or game over for this cool console companion? Our whitegoods experts put the Xbox mini fridge to the test in the CHOICE thermal lab.
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Topher
Identifies as young
Phil Spencer and the Battle for Xbox’s Soul - IGN
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.www.ign.com
Article by Ryan McCaffrey.
Some interesting stuff is in here.
XXL
Member
Shinobi on the other forum (a few days ago) said pretty much everything is coming to PS5 aside from Recore and Crackdown (or something to that effect).
hououinkyouma00
Member
Ryan McCaffrey has always bugged me since the "good old days" of IGN but he's still better than that Destin twat. Jesus that guy is insufferable.Phil Spencer and the Battle for Xbox’s Soul - IGN
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.
Article by Ryan McCaffrey.
Some interesting stuff is in here.
XBOX unfortunately lost their soul a long time ago. The original XBOX had soul, and I think is greatly underrated as it had a ton of great games, great exclusives, and better looking/performing multiplats on top of basically creating the modern online gaming ecosystem. 360 was still great, but it already started the downfall near the end, and then obviously they fucked it up with the XBOX One. That generation actually started to turn around near the end so I had high hopes that they could make it great again.
I'll probably get hate for this but PC is the reason for XBOX failure IMO. Once they started putting every single game day 1 on PC it gave people zero reason to continue owning/buying a XBOX (obviously not 0, but for a lot of people there was no benefit during a time where PC was growing fast).
I actually miss exclusives as unpopular as that opinion may seem. My favorite generation of gaming was the 6th. You had 4 consoles that all had their own identity and exclusives. You had a reason to own every single platform. There is a reason why PlayStation waits to port games (I think this will continue for awhile but it will get shorter and shorter over time), and why Nintendo will never release their exclusives anywhere but Nintendo.
mayham2199
Member
I just don't see the point in them giving it one more go at this point. Think about it. MS wasn't satisfied with the sales of the Xbox one and wanted to close Xbox down at that point. Things have gotten much worse since then. They aren't going to get better at this point and pretending that MS is just a year or two away from consistently delivering block buster games is pretty much a fantasy.
I think they should just transition to their next stage and stop wasting money. To many people are losing jobs and I just don't want to see it anymore. Another console will just be more jobs that will need to be sacrificed in order to make up for the losses.
Ogbert
Member
Good article. Makes a lot of sense.
I work for a company that is very similar to MS, in terms of its position in the market. MS is a company that does certain things *incredibly* well. So well, that no one can even begin to contemplate competing with them. This position brings security and an almost bottomless pit of money. However, outside of that core proposition, it allows incredibly fucking incompetent people to rise within the company, on the back of that security, and float extremely fucking stupid ideas that go nowhere.
If MS was a fintech, Phil Spencer's mistakes would have folded the company within months. His errors are colossal. But because of MS' security, they unfortunately pour good money after bad.
I work for a company that is very similar to MS, in terms of its position in the market. MS is a company that does certain things *incredibly* well. So well, that no one can even begin to contemplate competing with them. This position brings security and an almost bottomless pit of money. However, outside of that core proposition, it allows incredibly fucking incompetent people to rise within the company, on the back of that security, and float extremely fucking stupid ideas that go nowhere.
If MS was a fintech, Phil Spencer's mistakes would have folded the company within months. His errors are colossal. But because of MS' security, they unfortunately pour good money after bad.
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mayham2199
Member
This was one of the many talking points I never understood. Activision was operating the way it was because of money. The idea that MS was going to come in and mess up their revenue (other than by adding COD to GP) was wild to me.
Ogbert
Member
I don't actually think most titles will go to PS5, but that's not me defending MS.
I don't think MS will make much money as a third party publisher. Their games are almost all uniformly average with better versions thereof found on other systems.
I'm not convinced there's enough of an upside for them to effectively dilute their brand to that extent.
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Trogdor1123
Member
The number of death stories is getting very old….
XXL
Member
100%.
I think they are getting ready for that and that's why they are cutting back.
Im thinking Compulsion, Ninja Theory, Double Fine and every studio like that will all be cut sooner than later.
With the big IP they own there is an extremely profitable path forward focusing purely on AAA titles between Playstation, Nintendo and PC.
All they really wanted was COD, Wow, Candy Crush, Skyrim, Doom Fallout, etc.
I don't believe a word about what they are saying about smaller games.
They probably keep trying to make TV shows and mobile games with these properties.
How excited Sarah Bond was talking about the Fallout TV show was revealing. Her whole demeanor changes, it's important to them.
Also, with the Nintendo being generally a generation behind, it also allows them to constantly (inexpensively) port prior generation games down and sell them again (like Skyrim did).
I'm curious where GamePass and Halo (and 343i) is going to land in all of this.
We'll see what happens.
Edgelord79
Gold Member
No it’s you who is clueless. McCafferty is one of the few good ones.
What insight did you want exactly?
ChorizoPicozo
Member
are you cereal?
Alebrije
Member
Yep know the story since I work on a simalar mega.corp that makes tons of money that Even can spend money on other companies and those companies can fail or just keep eating money from the core corp without worry of being shut down.
And one just wonder why this happens , most of time is to avoid playing taxes due to considations...other its because curiosity on other industries.
Pedro Motta
Member
Very smart man Peter Moore. Damn it miss the old Xbox..
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Phil Spencer and the Battle for Xbox’s Soul - IGN
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.
Article by Ryan McCaffrey.
Some interesting stuff is in here.
How is it that members one GAF were saying that Xbox was turning into MS gaming, but nobody listened? But now people are seeing the light. This was sooooo obvious once they decided to buy ABK for $75 Billion. Many Xbox gamers said it's an asset on their books, so MS leadership wouldn't care about ROI, since spending that kind of money gave you lots of assets that are worth alot.
This was always the dumbest way to view massive purchases like ABK. Glad most see the light now though.
