VGC : Phil Spencer, long cast as Xbox’s saviour, may be remembered as the man who killed it .

[solidsnake_1]

I do not see much point in dwelling on how we got here, because I think it is quite obvious to us all what’s gone wrong. All of Spencer’s big bets — the pivot to subscriptions, the variable hardware SKUs, the spending spree of studio acquisitions — were contingent on Xbox not just being, to borrow the Xbox tagline, ‘the best place to play’, but the best place to play the best games.

If there’s one lesson we can take from the Spencer era it’s that you can enact all the disruptive change you like, but you cannot disprove this industry’s oldest truth: great games sell consoles. A hundred billion dollars later, Xbox still doesn’t have them — if anything I would argue its firstparty output has got worse since the shopping spree began — and its struggles are, as such, no surprise at all.

Now that all his big bets have failed, Spencer is turning to corrective measures — short-term fixes that might juice the numbers in the next couple of P&Ls, but seem destined to further weaken the Xbox ecosystem down the line. Bringing the likes of the Epic Game Store and Itch.io to Xbox consoles would confuse the value proposition, give users more ways to give money to people that aren’t Microsoft, and do nothing to transform Xbox’s fortunes.

I would love to have my Itch library on a console, don’t get me wrong, but if Spencer thinks that’s going to move the needle in any meaningful way then I have some magic beans to sell him. And if he thinks that this is a two-way street — the first step on a journey that ends with Game Pass on PS5, Switch and Steam — then he has truly lost the plot.

Taking former exclusives to rival platforms is yet more short-term thinking. Sure, it may pump the numbers a bit, but each new port is one less reason for a potential new customer to buy an Xbox, and one more reason for Xbox owners to switch sides and abandon the platform for good. Once again I cannot see a way in which this ends with Xbox, as we know it today at least, getting stronger.

To be clear, I feel bad for Spencer. He seems a decent sort. I think he’s come into this with the best of intentions, and in a parallel universe where every horse he backed romped home, he would be credited with transforming, and perhaps even saving, the game industry. In another, where instead of spending $70bn on Activision Blizzard he spent it on 230-odd games with the same budget as Spider-Man 2, perhaps Xbox is flying.

But in our world he has spent ten years and gargantuan amounts of money taking Xbox from third place to third place, and that is not the market’s fault. If the writing isn’t on the wall for Xbox as a whole, then it certainly could be for him.

Phil Spencer, long cast as Xbox’s saviour, may be remembered as the man who killed it

 

[Dabaus]

Sounds like they are setting up the narrative for his retirement and im guessing its going to be sooner rather than later.

 

[mckmas8808]

Literally, every bet he made has made Xbox worse.

 

[Swift_Star]

This article makes way more sense than the embarrassing one from ign.

 

[Sunrise Ninja]

Finally a real journalist, I was starting to believe they don't exist anymore.

I hope this guy doesn't end up suicided

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

One thing wrong with that article: these aren't short-term fixes. They're long-term transitions into Microsoft becoming a multiplat software-first, hardware-second company in gaming.

They don't care if these changes make Xbox consoles less relevant because they aren't going to continue making Xbox consoles anymore to begin with! If Xbox "consoles" become PC gaming devices, what's it matter ultimately if they bring their games to PlayStation & Nintendo Day 1, when they already do that for PC? The only hang-up would probably be the Xbox branding of such devices, but that could get taken care of with competent messaging.

These kind of articles are coming at it from the POV of a disenchanted Xbox console diehard and I get that, but they're not looking at it from the POV of a company wanting to get away from the traditional console business model ASAP. And that company, is Microsoft.

There's no future in the console hardware market for a console that will struggle to barely sell 4 million units in what should be a peak calendar year.

 

[panda-zebra]

A hundred billion dollars later, Xbox still doesn’t have them

Any year now...

 

[Killer_Sakoman]

One thing wrong with that article: these aren't short-term fixes. They're long-term transitions into Microsoft becoming a multiplat software-first, hardware-second company in gaming.

They don't care if these changes make Xbox consoles less relevant because they aren't going to continue making Xbox consoles anymore to begin with! If Xbox "consoles" become PC gaming devices, what's it matter ultimately if they bring their games to PlayStation & Nintendo Day 1, when they already do that for PC? The only hang-up would probably be the Xbox branding of such devices, but that could get taken care of with competent messaging.

These kind of articles are coming at it from the POV of a disenchanted Xbox console diehard and I get that, but they're not looking at it from the POV of a company wanting to get away from the traditional console business model ASAP. And that company, is Microsoft.

There's no future in the console hardware market for a console that will struggle to barely sell 4 million units in what should be a peak calendar year.

It is funny how they are transitioning into the wrong direction because their chronic problem is not the hardware but the software.

 

[Shadow2027]

I still cant believe that to this day, there are many on xbox camp who refuse to criticize any of Phil’s decisions. The most recent one is inflation and the economy which everyone is going through, and they literally had consoles in the dollar store and cant sell

 

[GachaMadeMeBroke]

If there’s one lesson we can take from the Spencer era it’s that you can enact all the disruptive change you like, but you cannot disprove this industry’s oldest truth: great games sell consoles.

VGC cooked with this article, gad damn.

 

[Nhomnhom]

Seems like It took people over 15 years to realize this scumbag was terrible at his job. Pretty much all Xbox shortcomings can be directly tied to him since the late 360 days.

- He was the guy in charge of internal studios when they pivoted to supporting Kinect.
- He was one of the top executives making the Xbox One plans and even was the one they send on stage to announce the price.
- In all his time at Xbox he somehow never managed to oversee a single truly successful new IP.
- Under him none of their studios thrived and he had to compensate that by going into an acquisition spree (that would inevitably make their console business unsustainable)
- All along he tried to gaslight people into believing Gamepass was a good model for the gaming industry.
- Dude was pretty much just stringing MS leadership along with anything stupid he could come up with, benefiting from the fact they never really cared and that the gaming media is corrupt/incompetent.
- In pretty much every opportunity he had he showed the world that he had no character and was comfortable with lying and deceiving people.
- He encouraged and supported the most toxic elements of the Xbox community, turning the Xbox fans into these goblins that we have gotten used to.

Being good at passing blame around seems like it will get you pretty far as a top executive in a gaming company.

 

[Sircaw]

Whenever Phil Spencer walks onto stage, the accompanying music should be this.

 

[arvfab]

Seems like It took people over 15 years to realize this scumbag was terrible at his job. Pretty much all Xbox shortcomings can be directly tied to him since the late 360 days.

- He was the guy in charge of internal studios when they pivoted to support Kinect
- He was on of the top executives making the Xbox One plan and even was the one they send on stage to announce the price.
- In all his time at Xbox he somehow never managed to overseen a single truly successful new IP.
- Under him they none of their studios thrived and he had to compensate that by going into an acquisition spree (that would inevitably make their console business unsustainable)
- All along he tried to gaslight people into believing Gamepass was a good model for the gaming industry.
- Dude was pretty much just stringing MS leadership along with anything stupid he could come up with and benefiting from the fact they never really cared.
- In pretty much every opportunity he had he showed the world that he had no character and was comfortable with lying and deceiving people.
- He encouraged and supported the most toxic elements of the Xbox community, turning the Xbox fans into these goblins that we have gotten used to.

Being good at passing blame around seems like it will get you pretty far as executive in a gaming company.

Let's not forget he greenlighted day and date Xbox games on PC and the Series S.

 

[Petekilla]

This article makes way more sense than the embarrassing one from ign.

Because it wasn’t written by Spencer’s mouth piece, aka Ryan McCaffrey.

 

[Johnic]

Because it wasn’t written by Spencer’s mouth piece, aka Ryan McCaffrey.

There's that one shill in the comments defending MS. I've seen him before.

Completely predictable MS PR bullshit of SonyToo.

 

[Bryank75]

I mean the idea of trying to get all Xbox gamers onto a subscription service made sense, since they were not buying many games on average.

If they could have gotten the lower revenue customers all onto Gamepass, it would have been positive for them.

Unfortunately, the higher revenue and more aware / engaged gamers moved to the subscription and were now lower revenue customers, due to the value of GP and the lower revenue / casuals never changed their habits too much it seems... so they got the worst of both worlds.

I'm not defending Phil btw.

 

[Nhomnhom]

Let's not forget he greenlighted day and date Xbox games on PC and the Series S.

Yea, there are too many bad decisions and spins for anyone to remember (I didn't mention his love for CG trailer, his over hyping of Xbox and their games, his willingness to release games in sorry states, his shamelessness and hypocrisy.

This is the dude that promised on stage VR support for the Xbox One X, that used Minecraft RT to promote the Series X and never bothered releasing it, that for years promoted HoloLens on stage as if it was a feature of Xbox.

All he ever cared about was perception, so his main focus was controlling the narrative, he just didn't account for the fact that the average gamer that goes out and buy stuff doesn't give a shit about what the media is trying to push.

He is the exact type of piece of shit executive that Xbox clown fans deserved.

 

[Nhomnhom]

I mean the idea of trying to get all Xbox gamers onto a subscription service made sense, since they were not buying many games on average.

If they could have gotten the lower revenue customers all onto Gamepass, it would have been positive for them.

Unfortunately, the higher revenue and more aware / engaged gamers moved to the subscription and were now lower revenue customers, due to the value of GP and the lower revenue / casuals never changed their habits too much it seems... so they got the worst of both worlds.

I'm not defending Phil btw.

It made sense to offer all their games on a subscription when they were barely able to release any games. It was a desperate move when they came up with it and they just were set in trying to make it work (when it was obvious that it never would). As they grew in size to attempt to have the output to make it work it just started to make less and less sense.

About $100B dollars later this is where we are at: can't move consoles, can't sell games, can't sell subscription, can't release games and their studios are a complete mess.

 

[Gediminas]

Any year now...

Next E3 you will see it..

 

[Dabaus]

Another post from SneakerSO:

Would it be accurate to say that 3rd parties are, at an accelerating rate, looking at Xbox as a rival and not a partner anymore? If that corner gets turned, would that not create a near irreversible trajectory for the Xbox brand, even if they decided later to course correct? Or is this just the picture, of decisions already made, becoming clear more and more? As you said, boiling the frog.

“This was already happening to a significant extent back when Microsoft was openly buying up so much of the industry. The difference now is that the 3rd party GP funding pool isn't what it used to be, and those funds went a long, long way in securing ports and marketing deals with publishers who were well and truly at their wits end with supporting Xbox.

I know for a fact that the catalyst that started the more significant conversations started that week in Feb when all hell broke loose and the news about 3rd party publishing by Xbox caught most of the exec-class of the industry off guard. Microsoft has always been aware that publishers are somewhat, and increasingly so, justified in skipping the Xbox as a platform to support. I can factually tell you that in the lead up to the new generation kicking off in 2020, the entire industry was taking meetings with Phil and his executive team and buying into the growth and vision that Xbox was laying out. The management team at Xbox/Microsoft are nothing if not incredible sales people, first and foremost. Making insane claims like how much they estimate GP will grow console users with your bespoke console strategy aimed towards targeting users at multiple income levels is an easy sell, but the math on that particular pitch always relied on the Xbox Series S massively taking off with a consumer base that so many C-Suite level folks in gaming feel exist: a silent userbase for which gaming is far too expensive to get into, but would do so at lower price points or with subscriptions, which is the same exact use case pitch that caused so many to dump billions into propping up cloud-rendered gaming (this use case will be profitable any day now).

So many lofty promises on what the user numbers and engagement metrics would look like, and everyone looks like fools now for believing it, all while one of the 4 major ecosystems is now impossibly hard to sell actual SW in.

When I used the term 'boiling the frog', I was referring to the more dedicated Xbox userbase and getting them accustomed to the idea of a broader publishing strategy for Microsoft. I doubt a 'course correction' is going to happen btw - not only is it far too late for that, but their ability to sell HW all over the world is just not at the level needed to justify their previous strategy.”