Phil Spencer floated the idea of shutting down Xbox in favor of mobile

[Dr Bass]

So this is fun. Phil Spencer, champion of Xbox, mentions the idea of just closing down all the "Xbox stuff" to create a mobile division within MS using the resources freed up by doing so. Clearly the man feels strongly about console gaming and what it means to the customers.

Discuss.

 

[Lord Mittens]

It's a kick in the guts for me.

 

[Dr Bass]

It's a kick in the guts for me.

Can you explain? I mean I get if you're a big fan of the platform.

To me it just shows that Spencer doesn't give a about Xbox. Not at his core he doesn't. It's just all about money, period.

I at least believe there are head guys at Sony and Nintendo that love making and playing games, and I think this difference really shows in all the respective products.

I wonder if the Bethesda guys hate that they make games for these clowns now.

 

[Lord Mittens]

Can you explain? I mean I get if you're a big fan of the platform.

To me it just shows that Spencer doesn't give a about Xbox. Not at his core he doesn't. It's just all about money, period.

I at least believe there are head guys at Sony and Nintendo that love making and playing games, and I think this difference really shows in all the respective products.

I wonder if the Bethesda guys hate that they make games for these clowns now.

That Xbox is just expendable and can be easily thrown away at a whims notice. Though this was 2019, so that direction went elsewhere after they started purchasing big...
I hate this whole thing.

I personally don't think Jim Ryan gives much of a shit about gaming either, just the $$$. I think @Bryank75 would agree with me there?

 

[AshHunter216]

I doubt many articles get written about this.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Honestly, mobile and PC are Microsoft's biggest growth vectors by far, but it's not because console is "too small". It's because they have way too much baggage in the console space, and no real vested interests in console outside of hating Sony. Whereas on PC, they have Windows, and on mobile, they hate Apple & Google but don't have any of the years of terrible baggage they have in console gaming by constantly coming up short compared to Sony & Nintendo.

There are already so many aspects on the traditional console business model they lose money on, that they wouldn't be losing on if they just left that model behind, focused core gaming efforts on PC by revamping the Windows Store and continuing Steam support/partnerships. Make Xbox "consoles" into NUC-style PCs optimized for Windows gaming, with a console-like UI that can be optionally switched to regular Windows. And be a genuine multiplat publisher since there's no incentive to make games PC-exclusive outside of technical limitations of consoles or mobile (so some games may be PC timed exclusive and by association Xbox-exclusive (since Xbox is a PC under this new model).

They would also be able to sell Xbox hardware at an actual profit like they do with Surface devices...though maybe a bit more manageable in prices. They could still leverage All-Access for customers to pay off, too, and have a much better incentive for regular 1-2 year hardware refreshes for All-Access members to upgrade to.

The ONLY reason Microsoft have not done this yet, is due to pettiness and pride. Pettiness against PlayStation, and pride in thinking such a shift is admitting weakness & defeat. Well they are already admitting weakness & defeat in these acquisition proceedings. so that part is behind them.

 

[Plextorage]

Damn, another missed opportunity

 

[Systemshock2023]

Reminder that Sony would lock down Playstation right away if they were constantly bleeding money there. They did it with other divisions. Love for gaming my arse...

 

[Box]

Same old excuses.

It's been clear as day what Xbox has planned here.

The clear and present danger GamePass poses to traditional gaming can't be overstated.

They want to turn GamePass into Netflix, raise the price, lower the cost of content, be platform agnostic.

The problem is Sony and Nintendo are in their way, particularly Sony. They know they've lost the "console war" and they bet big on xCloud and GamePass instead. It's the reason why they raised prices on GamePass on Xbox but not PC. Ultimately, they want more adoption on PC and Mobile. Xbox is a means to an end for Microsoft.

Sony knows the same thing, but their strategy is still firmly rooted in traditional gaming (for now), but their big GaaS push is because of games like Fortnite, GTA Online, and Red Dead Online.

Mobile is eating their lunch and console is a small crumb of the overall cookie. The free ride for GamePass on console is slowly coming to an end and Xbox fans will slowly but surely realize that. Right now they're trying to boil the frog, which is what you have to do with subscription services. Look at Netflix they've raised prices about as much as they can, so what did they do, they went after password sharers with the belief that it would increase subscribers and at least in the short term they were right.

 

[Gods&Monsters]

I don't believe this is actually what Phil wants.

He's using mobile/cloud as a front to get Microsoft and Nadella to agree to buy big publishers. The real target is always Sony and AAA gaming.

He wants COD, Doom, Fallout, Obsidian, Sega. None of them are mobile, it's all console-focused. Mobile is a ploy to sell his plan to the company. Namedropping Apple and Google to get bigger checks but in the end the only one who's affected is Sony. As always.

 

[Shmunter]

Like Steve Jobs once said, MS is a creatively bankrupt company.

It’s all about what gets the best bottom line #1.

 

[Nhomnhom]

We were so close to the promised land.

 

[Deleted member 417]

Not a surprise. They've chased the fad money ever since Moore left in the 360 days. Kinect, digital, tv streaming in an box and now sub services.

Buying ABK allows them to become a 3rd party pub and focus purely on mobile, play anywhere streaming services.

 

[Yurinka]

To be fair, if you read the whole mail thread where this mail is from, and specially the quoted mail where this is from, it's clear that he didn't considered to close Xbox.

As I remember Phil basically got asked about growing in mobile and specially the fit of xCloud strategy there. He wasn't optimistic and mostly said that was super difficult for them because the Xbox players weren't interested to play their games in other devices and that to chase the mobile gaming user was also difficult for them because is interested on other genres, IPs and business models than the ones they had back then.

Then they made some thought experiments of things that maybe would be needed to be successful in mobile but they didn't see them realistic or having fit in their vision, as would be the highlighted part in the OP or to get some IPs that would fit (WB mentioned as example) and some very big Asian mobile dev like Nexon and trying to scale it to the western mobile markets.

They threw some random ideas of things they would need to do to be super successful in mobile, but without saying that these were things they were planning to do. Their current output back then was only a couple of unsuccessful mobile games like that Funk Gears, and Phil wasn't optimistic of appealing mobile gamers with xCloud, but instead saw it as an extra for a tiny portion of super passionate Xbox players (basically only a few guys compared to the whole mobile gaming market).

Remember this mails were from early 2019. As an example back then things like CoD Mobile or Genshin Impact didn't exist.

 

[Zzero]

Thats not how I read it. Sounds more like him saying there's no way to win mobile to me.

 

[Dr Bass]

Thats not how I read it. Sounds more like him saying there's no way to win mobile to me.

I dunno. He defended the idea by referencing ABK and “BobbyK” of all things …

 

[Zzero]

I dunno. He defended the idea by referencing ABK and “BobbyK” of all things …

I took that as an aside that someone was actually doing it. Though I also don't exactly know what Phil was saying there since its not like either Activision minus King or Blizzard was being dismantled pre-covid. Unless he meant they were pumping all Acti AAA assets into CoD production. Or he could be saying that Activision was building a mobile company within itself, minus the dismantling part. Not sure that timeline actually lines up though, Activision had brought King two and a half years prior at that point and most key King assets were already in place pre-purchase.

 

[flaccidsnake]

They should buy Rogue Shadow Legends and make it exclusive to Windows phones.