He sounds alot less certain than i thought he would. I think im at the point where I get triggered just seeing this guy. He is such a lying conman who has completely destroyed xbox and yet is treated like the Messiah of gaming by gaming journalists while the xbox brand collaspses world wide at an unprecedented level.
I think it's another case of a big PR nothingburger, which is very on-brand for Microsoft as a whole. But I definitely would not say Phil destroyed Xbox. Sales volumes aside, for better or for worse, the reason why Xbox is such a longterm dangerous brand right now is him. Now don't get me wrong:
i) I don't fucking trust him as far as I can throw him, he reeks of american PR nonsense everytime he opens his mouth and, ironically, his appearance at the FFXIV Fanfest put him in direct contrast with the far more human and relatable YoshiP and made it even more obvious how robotic and pre-fab he is;
ii) I think Game Pass will ruin gaming as we know it in a variety of ways, it is already having an adverse effect on the perceived cost and value of games, and it will only continue to make it worse as time goes by;
iii) I think his strategies are unquestionably monopolistic, are extremely reminiscent of the EEE strategy of older years, and Game Pass exists for the sole purpose of being a market undercut to facilitate / enforce that monopoly;
iv) I think this entire generation of consoles for Microsoft was an attempt to hijack and then promptly abandon that particular market segment, and leaving it in tatters as the remaining competitors have no financial ability to compete against Game Pass (I think a part of that strategy failed though);
It's clear that I have no love for him or his strategy, he, like all PR conmen, exist to convince idiots to evangelize a brand,
but let's be frank here, if he hadn't pushed internally for this novel multi-layered approach that aims to completely revise the concept of consuming videogames, I'm not convinced there would be an Xbox anymore. I think the Xbox division owes him a lot.