I noticed a lot of people are rewriting the Xbox One so that it seems Donny Matt is some kind of monster and didn't do a good job on the Xbox One. As the guy who did good in later part of the 360, only slowly letting things get out of hand with the rise of Kinect's success (also him) but still releasing some good games, he did a great job with the games and deals he set up for the Xbox One. it wouldn't be until mid 2015 where we started seeing what Phil would do and I think we need to compare the two for how they handled the Xbox One given that the biggest problem people had was the pre-release policies which were almost all turned around before launch (and ironically several of those policies people don't mind now) and the bad messaging from guys Larry hyrb under his watch. But otherwise he had a good game plan.
Don Mattrick
1. Saw the launch of Xbox one joining sony in breaking the record of 1 million consoles sold in the first 24 hours
2. His team led to the first 15 million units of sales which others coming in during the restructuring failed to do, so of the ~50 million Xbox One sales the first 15 million were in just a bit over 1 year, a massive chunk, before the decline then the static yearly sales until 2020.
3. Killer Instinct reboot, japanese exclusive Chaos Child, Titanfall deal, Fable Legends, Scalebound deal, Quantum Break contract, Crackdown 3, Forza 5, Ryse deal, Dead Rising 3 deal, Fighters within, Lococycle, power star golf, Xbox Fitness, Max curse of brotherhood, Halo Spartan assault, Zoo tycoon. all ready and in place before the end of 2013 in the launch window.
4. Had already got the deal going for Titanfall, Kinect sports rivals, got dev for Gears remake started, had already had 343i on the Halo MCC, had the Tomb Raider and Evolve(for 2015) deals ready, Got Dance Central spotlight ready, D4 Deal, Starpoint gemini indie deal, had Forza Horizon 2 ready, greenlit the Project Spark project, got the deal for Fantasia music evolved, partnered for Kalimba and ubisofts Shape up. These all were released in 2014
Phil Spencer
1. Screamride. Made the deal for Sunset overdrive when Insomniac needed a pub. Cancelled Scalebound, Cancelled Fable Legends, delayed Crackdown 3, delayed Quantum Break, did a bad job controlling issues with Halo MCC at launch. Oversaw Halo 5 disappointment. Ori and the Blind Forest, Fruit Ninja Kinect, then went on to move support away from Kinect, and got developers to as well resulting in Kinect being dead. Closed several studios without replacing them with anything, put Xbox at the lowest studio count in the history of the brand by late year. State of decay, happy wars. Rare Replay. Forza 6,
2. In 2016, finally releases Don signed Quantum Break after long delays, Raiden V, Recore, Forza Horizon 3, releases don signed Gears 4, , new hardware revision, Xbox One S.
3. In 2017, Project Scorpio Xbox One X revision, halo wars 2, Halo wars definitive, Forza 7, BC, Gamepass, Voodoo Vince remastered timed, Cuphead deal indie, rereleasing Don Kinect Disney games but for controller only to pad out the lineup, Super luckys tale (console launch exclusive for One X), Hello neighbor (console launch exclusive), Pubg timed, acquisitions storm starts.
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Phil had cut off many good staff and closed studios and reduced the amount of studios under Microsoft to the lowest point (5 or so studios, 3-4 AAA) with cancellations, delays even with other games I haven't listed as there's several, while seeing a decline in top franchises, and for those games he didn't cancel he didn't over see them resulting in ok or mediocre releases, bad timed deals except for a few that didn't do much of anything, the death of Kinect burning those players, rereleasing Kinect games from the 360 with the 3 Disney games to pad out a bad lineup, and going on an acquisition spree.
I'm not saying Phil didn't turn things around because his hardware and services strategy did put the Series consoles in their current positions as the fastest selling consoles for the brand so far, BUT it's also this focus on hardware and surfaces that he put over the games leading to the acquisitions as he cut the meat without replacing what was in the refrigerator so to speak, leading him in a corner where he NEEDED to buy studios because there he wasted too much time on hardware and services. We still see the impact of this now.
Hopefully that will change in 2023, but it's clear there was a clear different in strategy and gaming appeal between launch of Xbox One to mid-2015, and mid-2015 onward. They aren't even close. I still remember some people complain that the PS4 didn't have games in the first 1.5 years on the market, and how much Killzone was written off as a demo and Knack was run over and over again as a joke, while Xbox stacked the launch months going into 2014, and then still had goodies for that year.
Some later stuff Phil delayed was from Don too. When you look at the whole picture, Phils biggest contributions outside a few good titles was One S, One X revisions, and BC+Gamepass.
Now that since a few years ago Phil got Nadella to give him more access to cash for supporting studios, it's not time for Phil to finally surpass Mattrick in GAMEs too as well as the other areas. I personally will not give him another year, although i don't expect more delays i will say in the rare chance it happens...no.
