Phil Spencer Retiring After 38 Years At Microsoft (ign.com) 23
Xbox chief and Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer is leaving Microsoft after nearly 40 years at the company. "Meanwhile, Xbox President Sarah Bond, "long thought by many both inside and outside of Microsoft to be Spencer's heir apparent, has resigned," reports IGN. From the report: The new CEO of Microsoft Gaming will be Asha Sharma, currently the President of Microsoft's CoreAI product. Finally, Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty is being promoted to Chief Content Officer and will work closely with Sharma. "I want to thank Phil for his extraordinary leadership and partnership," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in an email sent to Microsoft staff. "Over 38 years at Microsoft, including 12 years leading Gaming, Phil helped transform what we do and how we do it." [...]
Spencer was named Head of Xbox in March of 2014, when he was tasked with righting a ship that had made a number of product choices and policy decisions that rubbed core gamers the wrong way in the run-up to the launch of the Xbox One in Fall 2013. Long hailed by gamers as being one of their own, Spencer could frequently be found on Xbox Live, playing games regularly with fellow Xbox gamers and racking up a healthy Gamerscore. His first major move when put in charge was decoupling the Kinect 2.0 peripheral from the Xbox One package, thus immediately reducing the new console's price by $100 to $399, matching the day-one price of Sony's PlayStation 4. He spearheaded the much-heralded backwards compatibility movement within Xbox, the Xbox Game Pass service was born under his watch, and accessibility made major advances during his tenure in both hardware and software. Xbox Play Anywhere, which sought to let gamers play their Xbox games on any device, be it a PC, console, or handheld, isn't new but has been a big recent focal point.
Spencer's time running Xbox will perhaps be most remembered for Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition of Activision-Blizzard-King in 2022, which took almost two years to achieve regulatory approval from various agencies around the world. But Spencer began trying to solve for Xbox's dearth of first-party games in 2018, when the first wave of studio acquisitions occurred. Prior to the Activision deal, Spencer's biggest move came with the $7.5 billion acquisition of ZeniMax, parent company of Bethesda, in 2020. The deal gave Xbox total ownership of Bethesda Game Studios and its Fallout and Elder Scrolls franchises along with id Software and its Doom and Quake IPs, among many others. Questions arose from there about whether or not that meant all of Xbox's new studios would produce games exclusively for Xbox consoles, and while some games were kept off of PlayStation platforms temporarily, many weren't and most now seem to come to PS5 eventually, if not on day one.
Spencer was named Head of Xbox in March of 2014, when he was tasked with righting a ship that had made a number of product choices and policy decisions that rubbed core gamers the wrong way in the run-up to the launch of the Xbox One in Fall 2013. Long hailed by gamers as being one of their own, Spencer could frequently be found on Xbox Live, playing games regularly with fellow Xbox gamers and racking up a healthy Gamerscore. His first major move when put in charge was decoupling the Kinect 2.0 peripheral from the Xbox One package, thus immediately reducing the new console's price by $100 to $399, matching the day-one price of Sony's PlayStation 4. He spearheaded the much-heralded backwards compatibility movement within Xbox, the Xbox Game Pass service was born under his watch, and accessibility made major advances during his tenure in both hardware and software. Xbox Play Anywhere, which sought to let gamers play their Xbox games on any device, be it a PC, console, or handheld, isn't new but has been a big recent focal point.
Spencer's time running Xbox will perhaps be most remembered for Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition of Activision-Blizzard-King in 2022, which took almost two years to achieve regulatory approval from various agencies around the world. But Spencer began trying to solve for Xbox's dearth of first-party games in 2018, when the first wave of studio acquisitions occurred. Prior to the Activision deal, Spencer's biggest move came with the $7.5 billion acquisition of ZeniMax, parent company of Bethesda, in 2020. The deal gave Xbox total ownership of Bethesda Game Studios and its Fallout and Elder Scrolls franchises along with id Software and its Doom and Quake IPs, among many others. Questions arose from there about whether or not that meant all of Xbox's new studios would produce games exclusively for Xbox consoles, and while some games were kept off of PlayStation platforms temporarily, many weren't and most now seem to come to PS5 eventually, if not on day one.
As far as I care, Xbox is over. (Score:4, Insightful)
In my stupid and insignificant opinion, Xbox hasn't been a relevant gaming platform since the days of the Xbox 360.
And now that Phil Spencer is stepping down and being replaced by M$' AI boss, it would seem the clankers are about to creep in to the ecosystem.
I know Sharma says she's not looking to incorporate "soulless AI slop" into the Xbox ecosystem, but on the other hand, Micro$oft has stated in recent years that they love open-source. In either case, I trust that statement about as much as I'd trust John Wayne Gacy around a small child.
At this point, then, I wouldn't be upset in the slightest if Micro$oft decided to just kill Xbox once and for all. If that happened, it'd be a great opportunity for Sega to come along and announce a new console. That would absolutely go wild online and in game journals. In fact, that's the future I'd want.
So unless Ms. Sharma holds true to her promise of a return to the classic Xbox experience (I'm hoping she means that of the 360 or earlier), then for all I care, Xbox is dead. Netcraft confirms it.
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I have yet to see how AI will really enhance gaming or game development besides making poor-quality art assets and low poly 3d models, neither of which will make Microslop very much money. The microsoft store is still a disaster too.
Microslop has had a long track record of trying and failing at building software though, so I'm sure this is just a new trainwreck in the making.
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Xbox is a gaming division. Xbox today means franchises like Mechwarrior, Halo, MSFS 2025, Doom, Fallout, World of Warcraft, Skyrim, Diablo, and lots of others.
If Microsoft kills Xbox, that means killing all of those franchises. Arguably, they're trying, with the demand for 30% profits which is really hurting Xbox, but it seems unlikely they'll simply off them.
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I'd replace Sega in what you said with the new Atari (note my much lower Slashdot ID, lol), but otherwise, I mostly agree. I don't see Xbox as dead, though... I think before long it will just be a platform-agnostic system store and library like Steam, that also manages some developers and licensing of their game IP.
Well, no surprise since Xbox is over (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Well, no surprise since Xbox is over (Score:1)
MongoDB CRAP (Score:5, Insightful)
FFS Slashdot, I get that you need money but don't force ads that takes up 10% of your screen with an X that doesn't even work.
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The point of any website, television show, or radio program is to sell ads. Anything else is secondary to that goal. Welcome to hell.
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I can remove the contents, but I still have the blank ad banner. I am using updated UO ext. in updated Firefox. :(
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"Try Free" doesn't even work! Haha. I tried to remove this ad banner with UO in Firefox, but couldn't get rid of it fully. :(
Late Retirement (Score:2)
Why on earth would someone work in such high level positions at a profitable company for 38 full years? I like to think I would have retired a lot sooner in the same situation.
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Because what drives people who end up in such high level positions is the desire to be in such high level positions.
Phil Spencer (Score:2)
any relation to Diana? (William and Harry's mum)
Xbox enshittification (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't say I'm surprised. The leadership at Xbox drove the games division of Microsoft from a humble beginning to being a solid player in the gaming scene, with many beloved franchises which they've handled reasonably well. Halo has become a classis for good reason, they've kept as good care of Minecraft as can be expected, and the new MSFS flight sim is really nice. They're clearly motivated by a love for the craft, and for wanting to cater to gamers. Under them, Xbox grew from being a piece of hardware which had a few exclusive games to a behemoth of a gaming division handling massive and popular franchises like World of Warcraft, Bethesda's Fallout and Skyrim, and Doom. They've got control of some of the biggest names in the history of gaming, and they've generally appeared to actually care about providing games which gamers will enjoy.
And then came the demand for 30% profit, no matter what it takes. Something which is pretty much unheard of in the games industry, except for a few rare outliers. And definitely not something anyone has managed to consistently maintain over a diverse game portfolio - and the Xbox portfolio is getting quite diverse. This has shifted focus from catering to gamers to instead shafting gamers for as much money as possible, while slashing costs, which means delaying, crippling and outright cancelling games which have been eagerly awaited by gamers, and finding ways to add microtransactions and the like to ensure maximum squeeze out of what is being published.
Small wonder the people who want to share good games to gamers are less than thrilled with navigating those waters. And slapping in a CEO who has no clue about gaming is a perfect way to ensure decisions are not sidetracked by concern for the audience, but remain focused on what matters: 30% profit, even if it kills off Xbox once and for all.
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Indeed. MS excessive greed and sheer incompetence is currently killing what they bought. Let us hope that after that causes the inevitable crash, MS never plays a role again in the gaming market.
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Totally agree with all your points. I think we can even look back before the 30% profit mandate and see game pass price increases ratcheting up as MS's AI investments grew over time.
Previously, xbox division was trying to make it as easy and as little up-front cost to start gaming with them as possible. They started bundling the hardware and gamepass into a monthly rate with a contract like cellphone providers, which is smart when you look at mobile gaming numbers.
Now it's blood from a turnip time...
So long uncle Phil. RIP Xbox (Score:3)
Microsoft are doomed without someone actually in touch with reality and willing to say "this isn't what customers want" to the upper executive... but when they're ignoring that people hate their AI so loudly, ignoring everything else probably becomes easy.
Spencer's idea:can't beat them, buy them out..... (Score:2)
***GAME OVER*** (Score:2)
At one point in the Activision acquisition (say that 5 times fast) he said they were going to actually DO something with the old Infocom IP. I waited patiently. He didn't do nuthin' except open source an absolutely ancient Z-code engine that nobody, even in the IF community, wanted or needed, because it has long since been vastly improved upon. (Okay, one or two people that run classic gaming museums might want that code just "for posterity", but meh.)
I'm not normally one to wish bad things on people, but I