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VGC: "Phil Spencer, for so long cast as Xbox’s saviour, may ultimately be remembered as the man who killed it.”
BruceWayneIII
Member
Well, at least he didn’t fuck up his pay check, I guess…
The Pleasure
Gold Member
The Series consoles are the dreamcast except with no hype, thrills or fun.
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I agree with you. My general assessment of Phil's comments was that they have not delivered enough new, high quality, enduring franchises in the past fifteen years (of which, I'm aware, only ten of those years were under his watch). I reiterate on those franchises, because they are each older than franchises that Sony introduced in the PS3 era and have since moved on from. It would be very, very strange if Sony were trying to sell PS5's with Resistance, Little Big Planet, inFamous, and other properties that have since been put aside by their respective development teams. The lack of traction with anything new has been peculiar, and as you point out, the titles being delivered by recently acquired studios are leaving a lot to be desired.
TheDarkPhantom
Member
Don't worry, The Ultimate Used Car Salesman™ still has a few members of his defense force fighting the fools fight, they will go down with the ship completely delusional and oblivious to the fact that their blind loyalty helped sink it 
Laptop1991
Member
Yeah, he is wrong with that attitude, can you imagine how many consoles GTA 6 would shift if it was only coming out on 1 system, sales would skyrocket, he is releasing games for gamepass that haven't attracted more subscribers that also won't sell on their own at the higher prices they keep charging, that's why Xbox isn't making enough money and its on Phil Spencer i just want better new games to buy and play.
MisterXDTV
Member
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Chiggs
Gold Member
Phil sucks, but you're blaming the wrong person for this. Phil doesn't control the licensing for the entire Xbox 360 back catalog. Even the Xbox One games...they're not all under his control.
Stopping BC was due to licensing; they simply hit a brick wall.
Edmund
is waiting for Starfield 7
And yet people accuse Sony of not taking risks despite them shelving aside old IPs to create new ones.
Dick Jones
Gold Member
Failure of the Year 2024 Phil Spencer.
Another award to add to the pile. I can now finally say, you deserve this one Phil.
Another award to add to the pile. I can now finally say, you deserve this one Phil.
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Clear
CliffyB's Cock Holster
Fundamentally the state of the global economy stands against overall market growth. We have the aftermath of Covid and lockdowns, the political situation with Russia and China impacting sales in those regions, a massive ramp up in overt politicization and social-engineering in the product itself thanks to DEI alienating a substantial audience segment...
I could go on, but its pretty fucking obvious why things are less than ideal right now.
Add on top of that the fact the Xbox has struggled with its content pipe-line and what it has released has been met with tepid interest. Something that Phil has to take full responsibility for because the simple plain fact is that Sony and Nintendo have been doing just fine in the same circumstances and time-frame.
I could go on, but its pretty fucking obvious why things are less than ideal right now.
Add on top of that the fact the Xbox has struggled with its content pipe-line and what it has released has been met with tepid interest. Something that Phil has to take full responsibility for because the simple plain fact is that Sony and Nintendo have been doing just fine in the same circumstances and time-frame.
diffusionx
Gold Member
Spencer tried to turn Xbox into a service platform, which was a bold change of strategy after the last one stopped working and also lined up with Nadella's vision of the company. It didn't work because gaming is not as conducive to a service the way tv/movies are, but also because the games arent' good enough. Microsoft really does not seem capable of managing all these studios. Sony is looking kind of clueless right now but they were able to spend hundreds of millions of dollars and get games like TLOU2, Spiderman 2, God of War Ragnarok, etc., out to 90%+ Metacritic. Microsoft put out 3 major games last year and they all sucked. Forza was designed as a service game and it is basically forgotten six months after it came out, while GT7 came out 18 months earlier and is still super popular. Rumors of Shartfield coming out to PS5 are met with a "nah we're good". Even a game like Gears 5, came out to rave reviews but it really didn't land at all and does anyone care about Gears 6? They need to make major changes in how they manage their studios, because it's not working.
gaming_again
Member
Yeah it's insane how such a savage and ruthless company lets this continue.
Hayabusabruh
Member
The only thing is if they remove him, he'll be replaced with inclusion. Next Xbox will look like a rainbow afro pick.
docchicken
Member
Sounds cool. I would use it.
Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
Oh ... so exactly what we have been saying for years?
Phil Spencer has only been good at cultivating a cult of personality among certain fans that needed something to cling to to continue having faith in supporting the brand.
But he's always been a poor executive. His winning plan was basically to use the financial power of the company he works for to make big acquisitions, give people games for free using Gamepass, in the hope of killing the competition instead of competing with them.
Even there 90 billions later he failed. He would be fired out of every other company in the world.
It's clear that in Microsoft there is a lot of nepotism and protection for certain figures.
But he's always been a poor executive. His winning plan was basically to use the financial power of the company he works for to make big acquisitions, give people games for free using Gamepass, in the hope of killing the competition instead of competing with them.
Even there 90 billions later he failed. He would be fired out of every other company in the world.
It's clear that in Microsoft there is a lot of nepotism and protection for certain figures.
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ShaiKhulud1989
Gold Member
People and media are acting like Phily guy was not in charge of something at Xbox before Don Mattrick. But at leas Don gave us a very steady amount of launch titles for One, layed down at least some of the future games and fostered some 3rd party relations.
In his 10 year tenure Phil made Platform no. 2 a distant third w/o any resemblance of pipeline, rhyme or reason. He lost mindshare on every market except for maybe US. GAF is blaming PS5 for lack of first party, but Sony was smart enough to barrage us with games from partners. And honestly, with Rise of Ronin, Stellar Blade or Rebirth I don't care who exactly made my PS5-only game. It's still a stellar (lol) PS5-only game and way too much games for my gaming time budget.
With Xbox, after Mattrick's influence dissolved along with legendary studios like Lionhead we've got shining beacons of AAA quality like Halo Infinite, Forza Motorsport, Redfall, Starfield and Grounded (nice game but not a platform-seller by any means). They've lost a lot of organic partners they've made over the years, including Epic, Bungie, Moon Studios (No Rest for the Witcked went with 2k) and Playdead. We're at the point where niche games and Japanese titles will just skip the platform if they are not offered some sort of huge cheque (looking at you, Sega). In hindsight, there were no single correct descision during Phil's tenure. Everything he started ended up either broken (343, T10, Coalition) or not working out (Gamepass Economy, stealing CoD from Sony, panic-buying Starfield along with BGS).
The perfect illustration of Phil Spencer as a forward thinker is Xbox One X Cyberpunk 2077 Limited Edition. You know, the one you can't run Phantom Liberty on and where CDPR/MS were forced to send some sorry codes for duped buyers.
In his 10 year tenure Phil made Platform no. 2 a distant third w/o any resemblance of pipeline, rhyme or reason. He lost mindshare on every market except for maybe US. GAF is blaming PS5 for lack of first party, but Sony was smart enough to barrage us with games from partners. And honestly, with Rise of Ronin, Stellar Blade or Rebirth I don't care who exactly made my PS5-only game. It's still a stellar (lol) PS5-only game and way too much games for my gaming time budget.
With Xbox, after Mattrick's influence dissolved along with legendary studios like Lionhead we've got shining beacons of AAA quality like Halo Infinite, Forza Motorsport, Redfall, Starfield and Grounded (nice game but not a platform-seller by any means). They've lost a lot of organic partners they've made over the years, including Epic, Bungie, Moon Studios (No Rest for the Witcked went with 2k) and Playdead. We're at the point where niche games and Japanese titles will just skip the platform if they are not offered some sort of huge cheque (looking at you, Sega). In hindsight, there were no single correct descision during Phil's tenure. Everything he started ended up either broken (343, T10, Coalition) or not working out (Gamepass Economy, stealing CoD from Sony, panic-buying Starfield along with BGS).
The perfect illustration of Phil Spencer as a forward thinker is Xbox One X Cyberpunk 2077 Limited Edition. You know, the one you can't run Phantom Liberty on and where CDPR/MS were forced to send some sorry codes for duped buyers.
Nydius
Member
From a consumer standpoint, Game Pass is amazing. Lots of games to play, money to save, most first party on day one. What’s not to love?!
All those things that make it so great for tye consumer make it horrible for business. Game Pass has devalued the primary product of the Xbox brand - games - and turned them into a commodity to leverage for low cost subscriptions. It’s conditioned their biggest fans (the ones most likely to spend $70 on games at launch) to not buy games at all because they have the expectation that it will be on the subscription service.
Diablo 4 is a great example. I have at least four Xbox “friends” on my list who I played D3 with regularly but who purposely waited to play Diablo 4 because they figured it would eventually reach Game Pass, despite the game releasing before the ACTI/MS merger was complete. Now the game IS on Game Pass and they’re playing it, but that is a zero revenue gain for Microsoft because they already had Game Pass subscription time stacked and didn’t buy the game. Unless they buy microtransactions, those extra players add no revenue.
Same with your friends who had no interest in trying the game. They were never going to buy the game and it’s highly unlikely they’ll ever buy MTX inside the game. They’re getting to play it, which is great for them, but they’re adding nothing of financial value to Microsoft, which is bad for Xbox.
Now add to this the money Microsoft lays out paying for third party and indie titles to be on Game Pass and it’s increasingly obvious there’s no way it’s sustainable from Microsoft’s standpoint. Not without either significantly increasing cost, significantly scaling back the offerings, or changing the system (eg. Adding new tiers or tiers with advertising).
Dr. Wilkinson
Gold Member
It’s so easy to sit at your computer or on your phone behind your GAF alias and armchair quarterback being an Xbox executive.
Syphon Filter
Member
game pass is anti consumer.
3liteDragon
Member
ChorizoPicozo
Member
yes, thats what we do. so?
Nydius
Member
Care to elaborate beyond a drive-by response?
Other than ownership rights, which I wholly agree is an issue (but is also not limited to Game Pass itself), how is it “anti-consumer”?
Game Pass, and especially Game Pass Ultimate, favors the consumer to its own detriment for all the reasons I listed above.
CLW
Member
Phil we KNOW it’s you or your paid shill(s) like Colt Eastwood et Al.
CLW
Member
You are correct….which should just HOW BAD Spencer has been as the head of Xbox.
His entire premise is I can’t beat Sony or Nintendo with a better product (video games) so I gotta change the game by buying everything in site and trying to loss lead Sony and Nintendo into following suit to their financial demise first because I have more $$$$$ than they do
ZoukGalaxy
Member
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Plague Doctor
Gold Member
Finally they are admitting it.
I a;ways disliked the Jesus-like status so many gave Spencer as he managed the slow decline in Xbox market share and loss of console identity. Xbox has never returned to the vibe and series of quality exclusives like they had with the 360 era. And that was partially Mattrick's leadership. Phil basically watered down all the brands and spoke a lot. Each year was going to be the year.... finally.
But I also remember the same people defended Mattrick during the Xbone reveal up until he left. Then he was the scapegoat to boost Phil.
But don't worry, if MS gets a new CEO for Xbox, the media and the fans will turn on Phil and say, "Oh we knew all along" and then use him as the punching bag to prop up the new guy in charge.
The media will be sycophants so their sales team can do business with the corporation, and fandom is a helluva drug for the fanboys. It's all about who is in charge now.
I a;ways disliked the Jesus-like status so many gave Spencer as he managed the slow decline in Xbox market share and loss of console identity. Xbox has never returned to the vibe and series of quality exclusives like they had with the 360 era. And that was partially Mattrick's leadership. Phil basically watered down all the brands and spoke a lot. Each year was going to be the year.... finally.
But I also remember the same people defended Mattrick during the Xbone reveal up until he left. Then he was the scapegoat to boost Phil.
But don't worry, if MS gets a new CEO for Xbox, the media and the fans will turn on Phil and say, "Oh we knew all along" and then use him as the punching bag to prop up the new guy in charge.
The media will be sycophants so their sales team can do business with the corporation, and fandom is a helluva drug for the fanboys. It's all about who is in charge now.
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Dr. Samuel Hayden
Member
I've been saying this for a while, I can't think of anything substantial this guy has done for the brand other than buy shit. Backwards compatibility was good but even that they've abandoned.
Dr. Wilkinson
Gold Member
That’s not his “entire premise”. He’s just stating a fact. There’s no beating Nintendo at their own game, and since Switch has become so popular, even more so now than during GameCube/Wii/Wii U. And on the other end, Sony is eating the lion’s share of the market for the high-end adult-oriented games and FPS games. There never has been room for three dominant players in the platform industry. One of the three just has a bad cycle.
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Xbox’s fate has been six feet under when they rested on their laurels the second half of the 360s life. Gears and halo gave them this huge boost early and since then it’s been stumble after stumble. I always buy both consoles and PlayStation has consistently had FAR better exclusives. It’s not even close. Nothing is going to fix that besides actual GREAT games.
rm082e
Member
As a former Xbox guy who jumped ship to the PC when they shifted focus to Kinect, I check this page about once or twice a year:
store.steampowered.com
I keep hoping something will show up there that I'm interested in buying. I got MCC and played most of Halo:CE before falling off. I bought Pentiment for $10 mostly out of pitty. Gears 4 doesn't even show up, although I own it on the Windows store. I don't think I got much more than half way through it.
I just look at that list and sigh. What a waste.
Steam Developer: Xbox Game Studios
Xbox Game Studios is the video game production wing for Microsoft, responsible for the development and publishing of games for the Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Steam and Windows Store platforms.
I keep hoping something will show up there that I'm interested in buying. I got MCC and played most of Halo:CE before falling off. I bought Pentiment for $10 mostly out of pitty. Gears 4 doesn't even show up, although I own it on the Windows store. I don't think I got much more than half way through it.
I just look at that list and sigh. What a waste.
Agreed completely.
Indeed. They take plenty of risks, and generally exhibit an awareness of when it is time to move on with a particular property.
I actually like Halo Infinite more than most, but I'm interested in seeing going forward if they can recognize very obvious faults, that can be easily corrected with very obvious solutions that they already own. There is no better example here than the interior level design once again being boring, repetitive, monotonous slogs. They even recreate the worst parts of Halo 2 and Halo 4's gondola rides, only.... worse. Even bringing a battery along from one optional side room to another doesn't get you a Spartan Core - just a rocket launcher and sniper rifle that are basically useless in the proximity of the combat taking place. There's several other very specific problems with the game, but I'll stay focused on this for a particular reason: we should never see indoor levels this bad in a Halo game ever again.
An agile, dexterous, well run, half intelligent company would realize, "oh right, we own id Software now" (yes, I'm aware nothing about the Bethesda acquisition would have had much impact on Infinite's development, which going by the credits, was the world's largest outsourcing festival). But you own them now, and you could have them lend the expertise that resulted in so many great levels in Doom 2016 (can't comment on Eternal, just kinda "noped" out of it quickly). Have those level designs remote in from Texas. Shack 'em up in the most expensive hotel in Redmond at night between office visits to 343. Just do.... something. If the 9% achievement completion rate for beating the game on any difficulty, combined with the seemingly shitcanned Halo: The Endless expansion isn't ringing alarm bells, then just keep it as MTX heavy multiplayer shooter #27 going forward.
I do not find Game Pass "anti consumer" in any regard. Players are free to look at what's on offer, consider the cost, and measure against their existing options (which for most of us, is a pretty monumental number of games already owned across a variety of platforms). To me it is simply the digital descendant of running to Blockbuster or subscribing to GameFly. I do think it has ended up poorly positioned in a few ways:
01. It really should have been introduced earlier in the Xbox One product cycle, 2014 to be precise. Yeah, it might have had some of the similar growing pains of "wow this first year of PS+ games on PS4 really sucks because they know people are signing up just to play Call of Duty online". But it also could have been a great jumping off point for "available day one one on game pass", perhaps benefitting games like Sunset Overdrive. And Microsoft has always had the check book to have made it, at least in some cases, the most cost effective way for gamers to keep up with third party games (not that 2014 was particularly fantastic in that regard). Follow that up with some Halo, Gears, and other franchises that had yet to be driven into a lot of people's "indifference" column, and you might have had a winning hand. They launched it on June 1, 2017, and at that point, even the people who were inclined to purchase an Xbox One already had a pretty healthy library of games to play, particularly if you also owned a gaming PC and a PS4. There's also the fact that early on that you could jump in for a few months at a time, at cost substantially less than $16.99 per month, and play through games like Observer_, Hellblade, and others.
02. ~$203 annually just doesn't click with people who either play the same F2P games all year and don't require it, or the aforementioned crowd who have enough games on their bookshelf, in their bedroom closet, or perhaps even stuffed into Rubbermaid bins in their garage to put a Funcoland circa 1996 to shame. I'm not talking about anyone in particular here.
03. It puts less popular, non F2P games in a weird economic spot. A good example here is a game that was actually on Game Pass at one point, but no longer: Outriders. This game had some genuine effort put it. No predatory MTX practices. A pretty generous level of customization on already acquired cosmetics. No aspects of the shipped product being paywalled. By any measure, it should have been to Gears what Destiny is to Halo. Doesn't hurt that the development team actually made Gears Judgment. It also basically got dragged into shit village once the classic "XBL Gold" was folded into Game Pass. Long story short, this was an Alan Wake 2 esque situation where the game didn't reach a sales threshold for royalties to be paid out to the People Can Fly (feel free to update me on the AW2 situation if that has changed in the past few weeks), the game was never remotely been tuned for single player, and no bot AI was added for two additional characters to tag along, and at the very least, draw some of the comedic volume of bullets that head in your direction every time you enter an area. Too many player levels, world tiers, side missions, main missions, or accolade farming endeavors for the game to ever have prayer at pairing players through the match making beacons before each mission. It also raises an obvious question for some people: "why stick with this if the $16.99 per month grants me access to games I'd otherwise be paying full price for?". So you're left with a game where ~70% of players never dealt one million damage (I got the accolade for ten million damage in roughly 3.5 hours), 50% of players never beat the first boss, and like AW2, you've got a publisher pocket fishing with an expansion that the base product arguably cannot justify the cost of based on its own performance. This is perhaps a hyper specific example, but I cannot recall a potentially great, and quite content rich game, getting reamed from so many directions. Publisher overconfidence, a $40 expansion for game that didn't really justify the cost of it, a developer never patching the game to at least be more amenable to solo play, and yeah, Game Pass economics all combined to kill the game. A tragic loss for the medium? Nah. But if they had been pulling this shit when The Division games came out, I'd likely have never played my favorite co-op franchise of all time. They need to get this sorted before some genuinely brilliant games get ripped to shreds by a "Game Pass for online / $70 launch price / expansion we may not even have enough players to populate / aggressive MTX" radiation stew.
04. Some of the best "bang for your buck" aspects, like the Yakuza games, are thoroughly nuked when you can get the first six games for a combined $19.99 on PSN during a sale. A mere three bucks extra to actually own the games, play them at a comfortable pace, and not get stuck renewing a service you might have otherwise been done with just so can finish the last ten hours of game (before it eventually gets yanked anyway).
TL;DR - Great idea. Horrible introductory timing. Exceedingly diminished "value" when sales are taken into account. Terrible impact on less popular games that require the subscription to function as intended. There's a few potential fixes, not the least of which would be having the trove of developers they own work on some good 9 - 12 hour, non predatory games that you move on from when finished, the Call of Duty Campaign library (this one is at least highly likely), etc. But again, there's no common sense being exhibited across varying parts of the Xbox division. Game Pass turns seven on June 1, I'm not optimistic in it existing for another seven years in its current form, in the market conditions it currently exists in.
Another excellent point. They got complacent. At one point their "flagship" release schedule for eleven consecutive years consisted of:
2006 - Gears of War
2007 - Halo 3
2008 - Gears of War 2
2009 - Halo 3 ODST
2010 - Halo Reach
2011 - Gears of War 3 / Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary
2012 - Halo 4
2013 - Gears of War Judgment
2014 - Halo 2 Anniversary
2015 - Halo 5 Guardians / Gears of War Ultimate Edition
2016 - Gears of War 4
I'm not even including any of the strategy games from either franchise, since I'd hope those were not intended or expected to be flagship releases in their respective years of publication. And feel free to drop the two remasters if you prefer. This is a "holy fucking shit" level of predictability. And after a bit of breathing room we got:
2019 - Gears 5
2021 - Halo Infinite
So beyond the eleven consecutive years, you've got either Halo or Gears (or both) as the big release for 14 out of 18 years, dating back to Halo 2, and concluding with Halo Infinite. Nuts. And I've played all of them besides Gears of War 4. 2016 was a busy year for gaming. Time for some variety, fellas.
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March Climber
Gold Member
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