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Phil Spencer is Retiring and Sara Bond is Out bot there's something really worst than that

midnightAI said:
Who said they need to release in the next 12 months, nothing has been announced yet, they'll know full well Sony aren't ready to release, so why rush something to market that is a big risk. Take your time, release at the right time and at the right price. I'm not sting that's what they'll do but they are making big changes in the exec positions and it wouldn't surprise me if it's because they don't believe in the direction they were heading.
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True; they don't have a gun pointed at their head. For all we know, they could cancel the entire thing and payout whatever penalties they have to pay.

However, this is what the CEO of AMD said a few weeks ago:

Lisa Su said:
From a product standpoint, Valve is on-track to begin shipping its AMD-powered Steam Machine early this year, and development of Microsoft's next-gen Xbox featuring an AMD semi-custom SoC is progressing well to support a launch in 2027
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It sounds like they're committed to 2027. It sucks to hear this, but if the next Xbox was going to be a premium-priced device under Phil Spencer, it's still going to be a premium-priced device under Asha Sharma.

You're making one big mistake though; you're assuming that the PS6 won't be ready for market next year. A lot of the talk around the PS6 seeing a possible delay is due to price and supply changes for key components. That does not mean they can't launch next year; it simply means they might have to charge slightly more and or produce less units for the PS6 launch.
 
I Miss the days of Kaz, Andrew, Shawn, Shu coming out at E3 for Playstation. In those days, we were aware of the higher ups. Same for MS. But it was pretty much Phil. Back in those days Phil was talked about highly. He wasn't the same douche bag he's made out to be today.

It really sucks to see how corporate is evolving in the industry. We used to cheer for the executives at E3. Now, we lose game studios and the names that we love to make fun of in passing.

Idk man.
 
Topher said:
There is way too much money invested and too much revenue being brought in to shut it all down. I think this signals a heck of a lot of changes on the way though. The big question on everyone's mind is what does this mean for hardware.

All bet's are off as far as I'm concerned.
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Scratch what I said earlier, word is they are full steam ahead with their hardware
 
wolffy66 said:
Agreed so they might as well sell these off. Selling games isn't very profitable, owning the platform they're sold on is. See Apple, Google, Roblox, Sony. Even most of Playstation growth is sub and dlc price increases. So either Xbox grows its Xbox owner base or they go away. Exclusives are the only reason to buy a console.
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Trying to sneak Roblox in there and hope no-one noticed huh? Software can be a platform.
 
Most people are happy about this news, but honestly, for me it's very discouraging. I don't have proof, but I also have no doubts—Phil Spencer is the last thing left of the Xbox we know. From now on, it will be very different, and I doubt it will be better.


Moreover, the person succeeding him has no real background in gaming—she comes from Meta. I hope good things come from this, but at least for me, this feels like a huge setback. Sarah Bond's resignation also seems to be in retaliation for what is clearly a dismissal rather than a voluntary departure.
 
HeisenbergFX4 said:
I don't believe they would axe those 2 and promote someone else just to close shop

I can see a major course correction coming though like maybe the death of Gamepass
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Sorry brozinski but rebuilding Xbox is going to take a decade at least and that would be with people who are insanely passionate about it and are willing to make minimal if no profits at all. It's not possible with the corporate suits who are now in charge. There is no one left. Trust me, I'm an objective observer when it comes to Playstation and Xbox and there is just no future Xbox.
 


Cracking Up Lol GIF by MOODMAN
 
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thicc_girls_are_teh_best said:
DRAMA!!!

Yep, sounds like she and likely Phil Spencer were blind-sighted by the shake up. Also apparently MS's shares fell quite a bit shortly after this or the news itself getting out.

Might be some kind of reckoning for the industry this year. Well, unless you're Nintendo, Valve or Take-Two. They seem like they're fine.
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They were booted IMO. Next steps were Phil saying he'll retire and Bond saying she resigned just to have some PR.

High level people dont suddenly leave on the spot with zero publicity unless they are going to a competitor. They told the CEO and then he had no choice but to get rid of them in the next half an hour. If lucky, you get a morning to smooth it out which I've seen before. Typically anyone leaving on good graces will leave in a month or something and give a nice final note to people with time to spare.

I have never once worked at any big company where a VP resigned/retired on the spot. Sometimes it can be announced 3 months beforehand. Anyone leaving on the spot was fired. And its up to them and company how to PR it.
 
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It's honestly crazy how some of the Xbox centric outlets are taking this news "wow, did you see that press release!!! If she can do all the things she says…who knows, we might be back!!" lol no shit. Like I would hope the first statements she makes when getting the job wouldn't sound like doom and gloom. It seems like some of these guys are incapable of talking about anything Xbox does with any framing of negativity, and they take any statements made at complete face value. Like is it really crazy to think Phil maybe didn't expect to retire before the 25th anniversary and the new console was shown?

It's always best case scenario.

The pods would be way more interesting if they actually talked about the good and bad in a real way.
 
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Ashamam said:
It sounds a lot like we have all been trying to tell you. PC path going forwards........
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You can still have PC with separate SKUs. Using only PC SKUs wouldn't make sense without having EA and Ubisoft fully on board. So that means that those publishers are likely on board.

Like I said before, IF they do PC SKUs only, that has to come with full ecosystem licensing unification. That means they could get OEMs to build hardware of various power levels at various price points. So Magnus AT2 wouldn't be the only expensive device.

So the GDK (PC) and GDKX (Console) SKUs share 95% of code. If they can merge the GDKX APIs into the GDK, they can simply use one single SKU that caters to all Nvidia, AMD vendor hardware.

Ideally, you would want a single SKU that can scale to PC hardware with Nvidia, while still being optimized for fixed spec AMD hardware with unified memory architecture.

Hopefully this means, that Magnus optimization is still mandatory to get Xbox certified. Not sure how they will deal with certain yearly sports games that skip PC. Maybe still allow them to be form factor specific?
 
NeonDelta said:
That Xbox Magnus ain't happening.
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It's going to happen, they've probably already spent money on R&D and it's in an advanced stage. But they're going to turn the Xbox into an AI machine.

jm89 said:
I want the story of why bond resigned at the same time. That's sound juicy.
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I think Nadella wanted more focus on AI, since the company is lagging behind in that area and may have faced resistance from the Xbox team.
 
StreetsofBeige said:
They were booted IMO. Next steps were Phil saying he'll retire and Bond saying she resigned just to have some PR.

High level people dont suddenly leave on the spot with zero publicity unless they are going to a competitor. They told the CEO and then he had no choice but to get rid of them in the next half an hour. If lucky, you get a morning to smooth it out which I've seen before. Typically anyone leaving on good graces will leave in a month or something and give a nice final note to people with time to spare.

I have never once worked at any big company where a VP resigned/retired on the spot. Sometimes it can be announced 3 months beforehand. Anyone leaving on the spot was fired. And its up to them and company how to PR it.
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Bond did say she is staying on as an advisor for a little while and that they've been working together for a few weeks on the transition. She could be lying idk.
 
Tobimacoss said:
Hopefully this means, that Magnus optimization is still mandatory to get Xbox certified. Not sure how they will deal with certain yearly sports games that skip PC. Maybe still allow them to be form factor specific?
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Nope I don't think so. All dev goes universal, MS optimises 1st party for their offering, which incidentally makes OEM Magnus based systems also more desirable and MS has an assistance program available for third party devs to improve Magnus performance. But not mandated. The only 'Xbox' left in Xbox is the BC, which I assume is 1st party only through some type of VM/locked hardware functionality. Otherwise its all PC. It simplifies everything for them. Both Cloud and in house.
 
I think Phil was sick of being just a face without power in the company. It is clear that he was not on board with the recent changes, but had to go what the actual leadership decided. Perhaps he had some power in the past, but this has changed some time ago, because so many things which happened at XBOX recently were a complete 360 degree turn.
 
wolffy66 said:
Bond did say she is staying on as an advisor for a little while and that they've been working together for a few weeks on the transition. She could be lying idk.
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Ah fair enough. I missed that part.

Sounds weird it wasnt announced earlier so it looks like it is new news. Although there's possibility it was announced internally but everyone kept their mouth shut about it for months.
 
Esppiral said:
He has accomplished his mission, destroy the Xbox brand.
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Not to sound like Jizz but people really think Phil is the reason that Xbox is dying? The decisions that killed Xbox very likely came from well above him aka Microsoft higher ups which he reported to.

Phil helped to bring Xbox back after the disastrous Xbox One launch and say what you will but at least Phil actually plays games. I'm not saying he's perfect and he's definitely partially responsible for Xbox's terrible messaging the last few years but people act like he alone brought down the entire brand.

Not surprised with how people talk about Jim Ryan and Herman Hulst as well.

Unfortunatecookie said:
It sounds like they're committed to 2027. It sucks to hear this, but if the next Xbox was going to be a premium-priced device under Phil Spencer, it's still going to be a premium-priced device under Asha Sharma.

You're making one big mistake though; you're assuming that the PS6 won't be ready for market next year. A lot of the talk around the PS6 seeing a possible delay is due to price and supply changes for key components. That does not mean they can't launch next year; it simply means they might have to charge slightly more and or produce less units for the PS6 launch.
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One good thing about Microsoft releasing in 2027 is they will most likely have the advantage of releasing before PlayStation which should at least help a little bit just by being the only next gen machine available. That is all dependent on PS6 being delayed of course.
 
thicc_girls_are_teh_best said:
DRAMA!!!

Yep, sounds like she and likely Phil Spencer were blind-sighted by the shake up. Also apparently MS's shares fell quite a bit shortly after this or the news itself getting out.

Might be some kind of reckoning for the industry this year. Well, unless you're Nintendo, Valve or Take-Two. They seem like they're fine.
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She is literally saying she has been working with the new CEO for weeks.
 
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