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Rate Phil Spencer's tenure

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

  • Total voters
    413
A short-sighted man who could never foresee the consequences of his actions. Incredible he lasted this long, but talent seems only secondary at MSFT. I give him a solid F.
 
Two console generations down the shitter, numerous IPs and projects abandoned/slaughtered, countless studios dismantled, literally billions of dollars wasted, dead brand

Easiest F ever
 
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We want our Xbox community to feel awesome, but this idea that if we just focused more on great games on our console that somehow we're going to win the console race doesn't really lay into the reality.
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His tenure will be remembered for generations.
 
I liked him

For the first couple years, he helped turn xbox around after that idiotic tvtvtvkinecttv phase.

But by 2016 when most of thebgames i wanted were coming to pc, sony was dropping more and bigger bangers it started dawning on me that he wasnt going to save it

Aaaand then the xbox series happened and i havent touched an xbox since. (Well, sorta. I have an xbox rog ally now but i wouldnt fully credit ms for that)
 
Hugare said:
Dude killed Xbox

Mattrick was better. Dude was head of Xbox during its golden era. "Always online" XONE fiasco aside, he was there when Gears, Halo and Forza were strong franchises. Announced Metal Gear (Rising) with Kojima on stage and Final Fantasy for Xbox.

Phil was all talk and no action
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Agreed. Xbox had actual exclusives with Mattrick and he was about selling consoles. Phil canceled much needed games and closed studios. Gamepass ruined the overall brand by devaluing it so much they had to give their games away to the competition just to try and make money back with sales that Gamepass killed.
 
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I thought he did fine when taken in isolation. But he was always going to lose this battle.

I don't think people dislike Xbox because of Spencer but simply because it's a Microsoft product. Which is honestly a pretty valid reason.
 
SunnySideGuy said:
He basically made backwards compatibility the standard in the industry. That one thing alone is huge for me personally.
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PC bros be like:

Am I A Joke To You GIF


I would say it's mostly hardware standardisation and OEMs that made it possible since you didn't have to do voodoo magic like with a Cell processor than Phil Spencer, although to his credit he probably saw this as a positive for backwards compatibility and rolled with it. Still don't think it made much of a change in the end - if the new games are good people will buy a new console, old games or not.
 
I gave him a solid F also. However, I wonder just how much control he had over things--did he actively destroy Xbox with his own decisions vs decisions others forced him to implement? If the latter, then maybe he should get higher than F.
 
F to pay respects, but he did some good stuff too. Overall D, considering where the brand is at now.

Maybe it's not all his fault in the end, but it is his responsibility.
 
Esquie said:
I dunno, you don't feel like the brand was already dying or clearly heading that way by the time he took over? Mattrick and the X1 completely fucked them. Everyone built up their digital library on the PS4 and that was a wrap.
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It was completely salvageable. People love a good comeback story and the fond memories of the 360 were still fresh in everyone's mind. They never showed any urgency to put out quality first party games.
 
Automatic B for not being responsible for Concord and Fairgame$ etc

A for the focus on backwards compatibility, that's still rad.

Buying Activision-Blizzard was some S tier shit.

If you're not a pirate or a weirdo, Gamepass is still awesome.

Hexen tshirt is an A

8/10 for turning Sony into a big customer.
 
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Everyone blaming him for the 'just 4 games' speech - it was never his decision to make - would have always been the final say by Nadella and the rest of the board.

It probably legitimately started at 4 to test the water, Phil was probably saying 'yeah cool, they won't sell' and Nadella saw that they did and that was the decision made.
 
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If you guys hate Phil so much who at least looks like he genuinely likes video games, can't wait what you'll think of a girl-boss who was focused on Ai only, to run the gaming devision :messenger_tears_of_joy: We gonna get XboxONE all over again...ai this ai that, the console can speak to you, the console can jack you off, the console can make video games for you, it can do anything except have quality games.
 
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Got handed over the worst situation, losing the generation that defined attachement to a subscription system. Then tried to buy out his way to leadership with invesments that made zero sense financial wise, and that I don't how MS HQ approved.
 
He should have gotten ahead of the safety culture virus, though, it hurts a lot of first party stuff.

Shit like onboarding SBI and that entire scene is just just a bad time. I understand it was meant for greater potential growth, but that didn't really seem to have worked out.

Hoping new leadership is more mindful of some of these risks.
 
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We should rather rate his manure

OT: From a customer's perspective I honestly can't do better than F. For me the 360 days are the gold standard and everything done since was moving farther away from that
 
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I think he is solid B.

Sometimes, the brand association is just too strong without logic. People are just illogical and easily sold on word of authority.

Phil launched the One X and Series X, both are very good and exceed what his rivals could do.

Phil gave us Gamepass. He gave us Acti-blizzard and Bethedsa.

Look, the problem is systematic. People are habit creatures and like to stick with familarity.
 
D

People excuse him by saying Xbox was already in a bad place but the fact of the matter is he had plenty of the time to right the ship. Both nintendo and Sony have gotten back from worse.

He took a struggling brand and somehow made it worse. If digital library were so important why are series consoles selling worse than xbox one consoles? Why did ps5 have around 30 to 50% new users?

It's simply a fact that phil failed miserably. Even content wise, he has been bad. He is directly responsible for the drought during one generation( he was the content head when don was incharge). Even buying Bethesda and Activision, two of the biggest gaming publishers didn't help prkp up Xbox. Gamepass itself was a failed exercise that devalue their content.

Not to mention how he and his team lost the trust of any sane person with their constant lies. The frequent use of "next year will be xbox's year" for the entirety of Xbox one generation and the "only four games" are still memes

The brand reputation, sales and discourse itself are at an all time low. He was worse than Don
 
Esquie said:
I dunno, you don't feel like the brand was already dying or clearly heading that way by the time he took over? Mattrick and the X1 completely fucked them. Everyone built up their digital library on the PS4 and that was a wrap.
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Wrong. Just go watch E3 2014. Just imagine all those games coming out. Imagine they keep getting banger after banger in the PS5 generation, where the drought in PlayStation Nation has been real. Imagine arriving to GTA VI not as as defeated player but as a real contender with the most affordable console to play the most popular game ever. Spencer and his choir of fanboys and followers believed that to regain a better position games weren't the answer, and therefore never bet on that. Never. Even as everybody in the industry knew it's the right way. But he's not from the industry. He, Ryan, Hulst, they are bean counters. They believe the business model is what matters, not the games. Not the product. They bet entire companies on that believe because it works in other markets so, how is the games industry going to be different? Well, there goes your 80 billion investment in your bet, Spencer.

Anybody that dismisses the damage to the core philosophy of games as a pilar for Xbox has little to no love for Xbox. And they are mostly their biggest fans, sadly.

Oh, and fuck 343. Mismanagement of the century.
 
I am not sure how you give it anything but an F. He was handed a shit sandwich sure but let's see how it went down. The game situation is worse now than it was back then, the hardware is irrelevant, the subscription service he built is a failure. Halo is now a 2nd rate franchise at best because he kept Bonnie Ross in charge way too long. He spent billions on acquisitions that have generated basically nothing. The two biggest games of his tenure are probably Shartfield and Halo Infinite and both were disasters. Spent $70B on Call of Duty and the franchise is in horrible shape after 2 years in his operation. His final act was the bizarre "this is an Xbox" thing which went over like a lead balloon.

It's crazy that with all the resources of Microsoft all he could do was manage the decline.
 
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Radical_3d said:
He, Ryan, Hulst, they are bean counters. They believe the business model is what matters, not the games. Not the product.
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This is the problem. And why people who say "sOnY mOrE pRoFiTaBlE tHaN eVeR" don't get it. Bean counters can generate short term profits. It's what their training teaches them to do. What they cannot do is understand an industry and execute a long term strategy based on that vision. It is the difference between Steve Jobs and the jabronis that took over Apple after he got pushed out. They released profitable products. Apple in the late 1980s was way more profitable than they were under Jobs. They made a lot of money. But the energy was spent by the early 1990s. There was nothing actually there.
 
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