At this point, what is Nadella waiting for to chop off Xbox from the top?

Gaiff

SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
Just how long is this circus supposed to last? Phil Spencer's tenure has been an abject failure. His only credit is having bought out big companies using Microsoft's infinite pile of money. The whole top brass needs to get canned. Phil, Matt Booty, Greenberg, and that hot black milf whose name escapes me.

But nah, in a year, everything will be forgotten when he'll have acquired another studio that Xbox will run to the ground 5 years later.
 
Watch Phil and pals get a bonus for laying off all these people.
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There's sort of this underlying assumption that Phil is the one making all the decisions around Xbox. I don't really think that's the case. It seems more likely Nadella is the one laying out a vision and Phil is the one tasked with doing the management work to bring those ideas to life. If that's the case, it's not obvious anyone else could have done a better job.
 
Always felt they should have replaced Spencer in the 2015/2016 years. It was clear back then he was out of his depth but the fanboys were happy with the 360 BC.
 
He's trying to figure out how to outsource or get most companies run by Indians. If he could he would probably do that already . All these big tech ceos are now Indian and constantly outsource to India while at the same time layoff American and EU staff
 
But nah, in a year, everything will be forgotten when he'll have acquired another studio that Xbox will run to the ground 5 years later.
I highly doubt they're giving Phil the company card for another acquisition.
 
There's sort of this underlying assumption that Phil is the one making all the decisions around Xbox. I don't really think that's the case. It seems more likely Nadella is the one laying out a vision and Phil is the one tasked with doing the management work to bring those ideas to life. If that's the case, it's not obvious anyone else could have done a better job.
This is exactly what I think. Phil's simply following the party line from Nadella. He had the chance to be somewhat autonomous and it hasn't worked out. Now Nadella is commanding Xbox.

Either that, or MS is getting VERY agressive to ensure earnings continue upwards to offset AI investments.

In all of this, does Sony/Steam provide a better gaming alternative if you care about employee health? Is there a good option?
 
This is exactly what I think. Phil's simply following the party line from Nadella. He had the chance to be somewhat autonomous and it hasn't worked out. Now Nadella is commanding Xbox.

I'm saying I think Nadella has been "commanding" Xbox since he became CEO. I think Phil has always been very limited in the moves he could make with the brand.
 
I'm saying I think Nadella has been "commanding" Xbox since he became CEO. I think Phil has always been very limited in the moves he could make with the brand.

Then why all this praise and adulation for him over the years and what is he being paid for?
 
Phil has been too kind, and let the studios cook for TOO long.

nadella has always been the ruthless type, stepping into and taking the credit.

Both are at fault, Phil hand's off kindness just made it easier to justify
 
OP the name is Bond, Sarah Bond.

They spent 80 billion on it. They probably trim a lot of the fat, a lot of dwindling IP and studios that don't deliver and simply focus on a few pillars that make money by releasing them on all platforms.
 
Being a C Suite exec sounds awesome. Just rapidly firing off buzzwords on stage once a year. Doing podcasts. Writing cunty emails. Firing people. All while getting paid millions. Damn.
 
There's sort of this underlying assumption that Phil is the one making all the decisions around Xbox. I don't really think that's the case. It seems more likely Nadella is the one laying out a vision and Phil is the one tasked with doing the management work to bring those ideas to life. If that's the case, it's not obvious anyone else could have done a better job.
The underlying assumption that the head of Xbox paid to be the head of Xbox is the one making all the decisions? I wonder why? Nadella doesn't have time to waste managing an inconsequential part of their portfolio like Xbox. We've seen the email exchanges and he was utterly uninterested while Phil was an active participant and obviously running the show. Nadella just approves or disapproves. He isn't running Xbox. It's Phil.
 
Then why all this praise and adulation for him over the years and what is he being paid for?

Praise and adulation from who? If you mean Xbox fans - because they have no idea what the business relationship and responsibilities are.

Why is he being paid? Because he's the head of a division with 22k people, dozens of departments, and he has to make lots of operational decisions that will affect the relative success of the strategic vision Nadella has laid out. That's a huge amount of stress and responsibility for anyone to carry, but someone has to do it.
 
Why would Phil Spencer be gone? He will be extremely successful in heading MS Gaming towards an environment dedicated to the continuous development of high-performing IPs, most of which are GaaS, from some of the largest acquisitions on the sector. And how will he do that? Layoffs on parts of the branch that do NOT matter.
MS Gaming IS a gaming behemoth, but not on the direction any longtime fan should reasonably want. There's no reason to separate them from main Microsoft anymore, which is quite possibly the most despicable corporation out there.
 
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Just how long is this circus supposed to last? Phil Spencer's tenure has been an abject failure. His only credit is having bought out big companies using Microsoft's infinite pile of money. The whole top brass needs to get canned. Phil, Matt Booty, Greenberg, and that hot black milf whose name escapes me.

But nah, in a year, everything will be forgotten when he'll have acquired another studio that Xbox will run to the ground 5 years later.
The names Bond……
Sarah Bond
 
Praise and adulation from who? If you mean Xbox fans - because they have no idea what the business relationship and responsibilities are.

Why is he being paid? Because he's the head of a division with 22k people, dozens of departments, and he has to make lots of operational decisions that will affect the relative success of the strategic vision Nadella has laid out. That's a huge amount of stress and responsibility for anyone to carry, but someone has to do it.

Hey dont act dumb, you know as well as I do that the media think the sun shines out of his backside. Hardly ever questioned the man and his list of debatable comments .

If he can take the praise for things then he should expect scrutiny as well when things go wrong and a lot has. Trouble is he never has come under scrutiny by any media outlet. They are More interested in his being his buddy.
 
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Good thing MS has been focused like a laser on DEI hiring practices. Now they can be really inclusive firing people of every race, color, sexual orientation and creed. Been working out great!!!
 
Nadella should also chop the Windows team, while he's at it. It might actually result in an improvement of that heaping pile of garbage.
 
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I agree, the responsibles should have been fired long ass time ago, but then again, MS doesn't have, I assume, other people that could replace them, considering windows is installed everywhere and still couldn't do shit to advance with their own gaming platform for the PCMR market, ala steam, so uncle Phil and crew live to rule Xbox to the ground till there isn't much else to ruin
 
I don't think Nadella knows of anyone who would do a better job AND fit inside the corporate culture of Microsoft so he just sticks with Phil.

Nadella hasn't been aggressive with replacing anyone at the executive level, they all leave on their own when they get burned out or find better opportunities.
 
More Sarah bond; less Philip Spencer.

We've watched his ugly mug for years, only see him get old, fat and lose all his hair.

At least we can have something good to look at while ship sinks.
 
There's sort of this underlying assumption that Phil is the one making all the decisions around Xbox. I don't really think that's the case. It seems more likely Nadella is the one laying out a vision and Phil is the one tasked with doing the management work to bring those ideas to life. If that's the case, it's not obvious anyone else could have done a better job.

Exactly this. Thing is most people don't even think Microsoft when they think about Xbox. It's always Xbox this, Phil that, etc. They have no idea how Microsoft's enterprise software empire works and how laser focused Nadella is on incorporating everything into the Microsoft ecosystem and getting everything turned into a subscription. Microsoft's business model as a company, for the entirety of their history, has been enterprise software first and everything else after.

The only reason Microsoft even entered the console business to begin with was the perceived threat of Sony in the late 90s/early 2000s when their PC business was becoming established and the PS2 had an iron grip on the living room. They have been pushing people further into Microsoft's platform since the very beginning, and were the first of the platform holders to start charging its userbase a subscription when they debuted Xbox Live.

Maybe it's just been so long people forget, or maybe the majority of people making noise over Xbox are just younger and have no recollection of history. Or maybe I'm the meme "old man yells at Microsoft Cloud".

Anyway, thank you rm082e for thinking critically at all.

This is exactly what I think. Phil's simply following the party line from Nadella. He had the chance to be somewhat autonomous and it hasn't worked out. Now Nadella is commanding Xbox.

Either that, or MS is getting VERY agressive to ensure earnings continue upwards to offset AI investments.

In all of this, does Sony/Steam provide a better gaming alternative if you care about employee health? Is there a good option?

There is middle ground. Nadella was ruling with an iron fist when he first took over in 2014 when Phil Spencer replaced Don Mattrick. Nadella was firmly controlling every part of Microsoft's business at the beginning, to set things up with the vision he and the board saw for the company. Phil Spencer was tasked with salvaging the Xbone disaster. I wouldn't say it went well, but it certainly went as well as it could have given the complete dumpster fire he inherited (years of dicking around with Kinect, migration to digital, and then the media backfire just as Sony as regaining territory). This is why Phil is so upset about losing the "most important generation" where gamers built their digital libraries (which he is correct about).

Xbox didn't have a chance - and for anyone reading this, don't respond with brain-dead takes like "he should have made Halo and Gears good" when those dev teams and decisions were long made before he became in charge. Halo 4 was a huge disappointment and it was released a couple years prior, 343 was basically done with MCC and that was rushed out the door too early (like much of Microsoft's software) to generate some revenue and try to sell ANY Xbones.

All of that was set in stone, it was not going to change no matter who was put in charge at Xbox. They didn't even have their own budget and legitimacy in Microsoft's eyes at the time. Microsoft restructured their business segments a few years later (I forget when) and Game Pass was Nadella's baby that he tasked Phil with making succeed and was given budget to do so. I would say it has been successful, even if I'm not much of a fan of the service. Between getting on board with Game Pass and Xbox as a service, and finally given its own budget and some autonomy (around 2018), we probably started seeing the impact of decisions Phil made for Xbox first party around 2023 or 2024.

The Zenimax and Activision-Blizzard purchases were definitely part of Phil's push to acquire content they clearly weren't able to product on their own, and for all the bitching and moaning about Xbox having no games, take a look at the output post-acquisition. Microsoft is a legitimate force in publishing as the largest publisher in the industry. I would call that successful as well.

The underlying assumption that the head of Xbox paid to be the head of Xbox is the one making all the decisions? I wonder why? Nadella doesn't have time to waste managing an inconsequential part of their portfolio like Xbox. We've seen the email exchanges and he was utterly uninterested while Phil was an active participant and obviously running the show. Nadella just approves or disapproves. He isn't running Xbox. It's Phil.

Since around 2018 (maybe 2019) this is true. He also managed to make Game Pass into a successful service and made Microsoft into the largest publisher in the industry through acquisitions. Microsoft is playing the long game, not petty console warring bullshit. I think Phil did truly care about Xbox hardware and console platform, and is trying to salvage what he can. But ultimately Nadella's opinion is the one that really counts the only way to satisfy him is what you see now. That is where he and the board want Xbox to be, and that's what's happening now whether Phil is going to get on board with it or not.

Why would Phil Spencer be gone? He will be extremely successful in heading MS Gaming towards an environment dedicated to the continuous development of high-performing IPa, most of which are GaaS, from some of the largest acquisitions on the sector. And how will he do that? Layoffs on parts of the branch that do NOT matter.
MS Gaming IS a gaming behemoth, but not on the direction any longtime fan should reasonably want. There's no reason to separate them from main Microsoft anymore, which is quite possibly the most despicable corporation out there.

100% agree with everything you said. For a gamer and a fan of Xbox historically, you should be disgusted. As a Microsoft shareholder or businessperson interested in long term, you'd be very happy with what is being executed right now.

I don't think Nadella knows of anyone who would do a better job AND fit inside the corporate culture of Microsoft so he just sticks with Phil.

Nadella hasn't been aggressive with replacing anyone at the executive level, they all leave on their own when they get burned out or find better opportunities.

That's because there is no better person for the job right now. That could change over the next few years, and it's clear new leadership is being established within Xbox post-ATVI acquisition (they picked up a ton of talent and industry wisdom). Phil did what he needed to and somehow succeeded according to Microsoft's standards. I don't like the results myself and have skipped out on Xbox since the 360 days except for one PC Game Pass stint around 2018 which left me underwhelmed. As a hardware platform, Phil failed to correct course, but as Microsoft Game Studios, he has done as good a job as anyone that has to work for Microsoft could.





tl;dr Microsoft is poison and it's bad for gaming. Everybody thinking _____ would have done a better job is fooling themselves. Microsoft will continue to Microsoft.
 
There's no need for empathy. Drama is a waste of energy and never worked for once. In Business, I listen to what my clients want, in this case 'another PS2 or a gaming PC, and that's completely fine in my book.
 
i feel like he would like go to ubisoft or something if he steps down or be like j allard and head up a weird small software company
 
He'll be gone soon. I'm almost certain they know the day and date of his retirement at this point. They will let him go out with his head held high but everybody knows it is time. It's gonna be right before the next xbox release imho. I would say after but they have made Sarah Bond the face of that announcement so she will probably see it launch under her.
 
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I really don't know why Microsoft is sticking with Xbox. My best guess is spinning off Xbox would lose 2/3rds of its value because the entire business is backstopped by Microsoft's infinite money (propping up gamepass). On top of that, employee confidence is so low that in the 2 to 3 years it takes to divest Xbox into its own entity, almost everyone would have left between when it's announced and when it happens. So it's not an option.

So if Microsoft can't sell or divest Xbox, then it's only real option is shutting the whole division down with extremely high layoffs. That's extremely costly in a lot of ways. So treading water might be their least painful option.
 
There's no need for empathy. Drama is a waste of energy and never worked for once. In Business, I listen to what my clients want, in this case 'another PS2 or a gaming PC, and that's completely fine in my book.
The point is that even if Microsoft's new strategy is a good one (TBD), why the hell would you let Phil Spencer and his underlings spearhead it?
 
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