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Rate Phil Spencer's tenure

What's your final verdict for Phil Spencer's helm at Xbox

  • Total voters
    385
F rating.

Him and Aaron Greenberg have been a decade+ monumental failure for the Xbox business. They literally did so much damage to the business that they're now having to put Halo, Gears, Forza, and Fable on PlayStation.

J Allard and Robbie Bach, for as limited as their success was, had enough sense to know what Xbox was good at, what it sucked at, how to message the platform, how not to message the platform, etc. They never won a console generation, but at least they didn't Dreamcast the Xbox business.

Big papa Phil, on the other hand, was just a consistent stream of bad decision after bad decision and lies flowing into more lies. It's truly shocking that there are still a (small) amount of people who believe he was doing a great job as CEO. It would be like people believing an NBA coach is doing a wonderful job with a 5-70 record.

I wish him well in whatever he does next. But as Xbox CEO, he failed.
 
He more or less kept faith in the brand alive among fans after the Xbox One/Mattrick-disaster which is commendable, but I'll never understand why he recieved awards and general praise in gaming media.

I never got the impression of there being a consistent, clear vision of where he wanted to take gaming tbh and those emails about potentially buying Nintendo being a "career moment" really makes me think he is a more opportunistic corporate person rather than someone who had a genuine passion and drive doing what he loved.
 
Started strong went off the rails late. Priorities got off track. He wanted to build a great culture which is noble but it did not build incredible games which he needed.
 
His only good moves for xbox console were getting rid of kinect/slashing price quickly to 400usd to match ps4 back in 2014, maybe we could count as good move xbox one X but it didnt get enough support both from multiplats and first party studios so even here its somewhat questionable.
Xbox series S was terrible move, gamepass day1 was just as terrible, day1 xbox exclusives on pc extremly terrible- again im judging it from pov of Xbox console owner/xbox , not from pc/playstation fan pov.
And for that reason i rate him as F, same thing i would rate hermen/jimbo at sony just those fuckers didnt have enough time to fuck up as much as phil did later on.
 
If I was an Xbox person, probably an F. But as a PC gamer, I give him a B for getting the games on Steam, having the Xbox controller be the de facto PC gamepad and allowing me to try loadsagames on PC Game Pass for nothing with MS Rewards.
 
Still waiting for my man adam's vote.

Bored Cabin Fever GIF
 
T-Cake said:
If I was an Xbox person, probably an F. But as a PC gamer, I give him a B for getting the games on Steam, having the Xbox controller be the de facto PC gamepad and allowing me to try loadsagames on PC Game Pass for nothing with MS Rewards.
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This is a good way to put it. As a PC gamer he did really well for me consolidating libraries. But as a plastic console box it's been bad.

As a gamer, I played more games under his tenure than at any other point in my gaming life.
Gamepass had me playing well and above most here on Neogaf.
Backcompat had me move my library of old games with me. Stuff I still need to play.

Too bad he couldn't get the Series S down to a reasonable console price. like 199.99 or lower.
I don't know how much sway he had in what the developers were developing but the 1st party output has been mid. very mid to outright disappointing.
As if no one checkeck up and demanded to see what was being worked on. Just trusted the developers.
My own take is those developers have been sitting around cashing paychecks and not producing.
 
A complete middle of the road for me. Tried to fix the woes during the Xbone era. Removed Kinect. Gave us pretty damn good backwards compatibility. Released a fantastic console in the series x.

But, he introduced gamepass. He constantly lied with exclusives that weren't ever going to be exclusives. He killed his own console by making it irrelevant with zero exclusives. Spending 70 odd billion to acquire ABK was a HUGE mistake. He effectively killed the Xbox console during his tenure.
 
It's interesting , the notion there will never be new customers in the market or those looking for something else should they have been a compelling enough alternative, all due to people building a digital PS4 library.
 
C-.

I would had rated it lower if I cared a lot about MS first party games or played COD a lot like the 360 days.

Preventing a lower score is a well made Series X. Quiet and powerful. Price was fine. And as a cheap ass, Game Pass combined with home sharing with a buddy to cut costs, makes playing games and MP dirt cheap. There was a 6 year stretch (two 3 years) where I did the GP Ultimate top up promos. Cut costs in half with my buddy and it was practically free. Going from Xbox Gold to the GPU was an extra $1 total for first 3 years, and an extra $20 total for the next 3.

Side note: Those wireless Xbox play and charge kits are just as shit now as the 360 days. After about 3 years they cant hold a charge anymore unless you keep it plugged in all the time which defeats the purpose.
 
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Hyper_hyper said:
He wasn't, but he was part of those decisions. Blaming Mattrick today, 13 years later. That won't cut it.
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Mattrick's calls are what led to the brand's demise. We don't know how much say Phil had in those discussions.

My gut feeling is that they wouldn't promote a guy to lead Xbox if he was the one that came up with those terrible moves. Doesn't make any sense.
 
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He failed year after year to deliver the basics (good exclusives). Then he spent 80 billion of pappa's money to save his sinking Vision -- only to end up killing the Xbox in the process. I wanted to give him an F, but I upgraded him to a D.

I gave him some credit because the BC initiative was good while it lasted, and he also had decent charisma -- enough to connect with gamers, to create a cult of personality around him, and to get people to buy into his vision. Granted, the vision didn't pan out, but I have to give him credit for interpersonal/marketing skills.
 
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I never saw Phil as part of the problem of Xbox, but Microsot's corporate structure and politics as being the main driver of failure. Xbox was one of the few Microsoft consumer brands that had success.
 
+ backwards compatibility
+ brought out xbox from the years of shitter in 2018
+ more studios
+ gamepass
+ pc and even other consoles for those who couldn't/weren't willing to afford another one
- some games on the shitter
- price hikes

I liked his direction, I don't give a fuck about exclusives and was pretty pissed at how microsoft treated windows like shit back in the xbox and 360 days where we would only get one ported game or two years later, had lots of fun with gamepass.
 
He gets a B from me solely for the fact that I can put an original Xbox disc in my series X and it fuckin plays

Also GamePass is a SMOKING deal for the consumer. (Bad for industry though)
 
Esquie said:
Mattrick's calls are what led to the brand's demise. We don't know how much say Phil had in those discussions.

My gut feeling is that they wouldn't promote a guy to lead Xbox if he was the one that came up with those terrible moves. Doesn't make any sense.
Click to expand...

It does makes sense. Phil Booty was the head of Xbox Studios, he is promoted now. Same as Phil was head of Xbox studios too.

Dude, Phil was part of these decisions for Xbone. Phil Spencer had 10+ years to right the Xbox ship. He FAILED tremendously.

If 14 years ago Reggie and Iwata started Nintendo demise because of Wii U, Tatsumi took over and corrected the Nintendo sinking ship with Switch. If Tatsumi succeeded, Phil Spencer could it too. Blaming Mattrick 13 years later won't cut it, man
 
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Xbox exists because Phil Spencer kept it alive. That's worth a lot in my book. The Xbox Series X is a solid piece of hardware, Game Pass was great when it was cost effective, and for a minute there Xbox really did try to recapture it's glory days. He ultimately failed, but he gets points for actually trying.

I'll give him a B.
 
Retroactively changing my D to a C due to the accessibility features of Xbox. Sarah Bond's last message on LinkedIn before presumably being summarily dismissed was exactly about that.



Disregard the absolute utterly uninformed retarded comments under that X post.

Xbox has a history with Gamers Outreach, and their "GO Karts" at children's hospitals:
06-1.jpg




I personally worked at a small community center with a proverbial negative budget and I contacted Microsoft. We got 2500 euros in yearly Azure credit to built out external services, access to A-grade refurbished hardware and learning materials. There are no strings attached to that by the way.
 
I gave him a C. I felt like being nice as he tried some things and took swings that failed.

Matt Booty would get an F.
Greenberg would also get an F.
Bond was clearly a DEI hire so I give her a C, since its really hard to guage what she was responsible for.
 
I thought some more about it, and to be fair to Phil, if you read the emails he sent, a lot of these policies were him trying to align Xbox with Microsoft's goals as a company, so he's not entirely to blame. It doesn't change my F rating, though.
 
He gets a solid C.

Animated GIF


It is likely that Xbox were be dead since ten years without him.
The Game Pass was and is still a great service, even when the prices are now too high.
The backward compatibility, especially with the Xbox and 360 patches, is a great service for fans.
Say what you want, but every studio acquisition under his leadership was better than Sonys dumb idea to buy Bungie (let's wait for Marathon..).

I already miss him :messenger_neutral:
 
Worked a lot of magic to come back from the XBone disaster and was put out to pasture just as soon as the fruits of his labor were starting to be realized. His worst mistake was keeping Matt Booty around.
 
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