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I’d be surprised if Xbox is a thing in 5 years after this news. The way things are right now Microsoft can’t make an Xbox console that will succeed by any metric. Maybe it’ll stick around as software.
Phil had to salvage the brand after the fucking disaster that was Xbox One and I don’t think he was terrible but it clearly wasn’t working out.
Replacing him with the head of Core AI is a fucking joke though.
With the cost of hardware skyrocketing and Sony closing studios gaming is in a really dark place right now.
Gaming is in a great place. AAA gaming is not, because of-fucking-course corpos don’t understand art.
It’s in a dark place because it is going to eventually become unaffordable to those who haven’t purchased a console or pc or handheld yet due to the ram shortage. I guess mobile gaming will become the main focus like it is in China.
Given all the fun I’ve had over the years with far less powerful systems, it’s not exactly a deathknell to gaming if it turns out that way.
It just better be the deathknell for terrible mobile game microtransaction structures and p2w schemes if mobile devices become the new norm…
My hope is the EU and China start to regulate mobile gaming for it to become less like casinos for children.
Fully agreed with that.
In fact, such regulations really need to go a lot further and make illegal straight up unnecessary subscriptions, too. If something doesn’t need actively maintained things outside of the actual product for it to function, then it doesn’t ‘need’ a subscription model.
A silver lining is that the NVIDIA/OpenAI deal was cut by ~70% this week, so hopefully the reality of AI not being a panacea sets in for those who have been driving the prices up. If the planned data centers never actually get built, production will shift back and consumer pricing should adjust accordingly. The MBA class will keep trying to manipulate it artificially of course, but they’ll only be able to keep the ruse this far from reality for so long.
Gaming is most definitely not in a dark place right now
Steamdeck, Gaming on Linux, indie games, Arc Raiders, skies are blue and the sun is shining my friend
Xbox is just going to be a brand/publisher I reckon.
There’ll be ‘Xbox verified’ console PCs or somesuch that aren’t necessarily made by Microsoft, and there’ll be the Xbox app for games and streaming, and Xbox published games.
And then another 5-10 years later they’ll phase that out and just be ‘Microsoft Gaming’ or somesuch branded, and the last traces of Xbox will be gone.
I see it as a good thing, maybe another videogame market crash is exactly what we need so they’ll understand that not every game needs to have an overblown budget, bloated content, micro transactions, massive player retention, sell a billion copies and win awards to be a good game, it’s about time videogames are recognized as being pieces of art first and products second
Literal definition of Monkey’s Paw:
All the Phil Spencer haters get to rejoice that he is gone. But now he is replaced by a woman who has only ever had AI related positions at Microsoft, and previously worked at Meta.
Even her letter to employees sounds AI generated.
Exactly.
People forget that the Xbox game division is only a subset of Microsoft so Phil always had to answer to the bigger suits.
Phil actually made games. Phil came from a pretty cool era and I’ve seen him interviewed over the years by people who you only go talk to if you liked games.
As far as US game company execs go, Phil wasn’t the worst.
Also as far as I know, unlike the
of a certain studio who ruined WoW and CoD and more, he wasn’t mentioned recently on a certain set of files that were made public recently.I know it’s not exactly a high bar, but Phil actually seemed like someone who cared about gaming in general, but he probably also didn’t get to be in charge by pushing back and sticking his neck out to save everybody else whenever it came to making the Xbox division as profitable as the suits above him demanded.
Whoever is next will be likely switching from a shovel to an excavator to dig the Xbox brand’s grave.
Phil actually made games
He did???
Like, seriously. The guy was in charge for 10 years. He did jack shit, and none of his first party studios managed to create something worth under his leadership.
A few years after shutting down Lionhead, he and Bond talked about “learning from past mistakes” so that it wouldn’t happen again. Years later, he shuts down Tango (the day before Matt Booty praised their game as something Xbox needs more of), Toys for Bob (and then, when they buy back their independence, contracts them for an Xbox game, because what is consistency?), Turn 10 (now a support studio), Arcane Austin. Rare spent half a decade working on a game that never got past its pre-production phase. He hyped Coalition as the “world’s first AAAA studio”, then unceremoniously shut it down with nothing to show for it despite working for 7 years and with outside help on one game.
343 was mismanaged for years and he never did anything to fix that, either. Of course that bit him in the ass when he bet everything on Halo Infinite, the only first party game to launch alongside the Series X, which was eventually delayed a year later. An entire year without first party games for their console. (Yes, Covid was bad for everyone in the industry, but their competition was able to release games in that timeframe). He then hoped for Starfield to save the day, which obviously didn’t happen, and by then everyone’s patience was over. 80 billion dollars down the drain for what? If I was anyone in a position of power at Microsoft, I would be pissed too.
He spent a decade pushing for GamePass and Xcloud, but never marketed it outside of niche audiences. I live in Italy and I’ve never, ever seen an Xbox ad in the past ten years. I can assure you none of my “normie” friends and family know what the current Xbox is called, let alone what the fuck GamePass is. The shit is so bad, my brother thought Cyberpunk 2077, a game that premiered on an Xbox E3 and that Microsoft had exclusive marketing rights for, was a PS exclusive. Could you believe that? Heck, everyone I talk to is surprised to hear that the Xbox One and Series offer retrocompatibility for OG Xbox and X360 games because, guess what, they never ran ads for that, either.
So many things went wrong with Xbox under his leadership, you could probably convince me he was working undercover for the competition to tank the brand. I honestly fail to think of one thing he did that worked. Like, I could go on for days. Heck, I’ll do one more: he spent the last few years attempting to merge the Xbox, PC and mobile audiences, yet using the Xbox store on PC is still a miserable experience that makes you wish you were using any other storefront. Ten years! He couldn’t find the time to fix that? Did he forget? Did he even care in the first place?
Spencer did jack shit for Xbox. The guy made promises every year, every year delivered nothing but lies, corporate bullshit and “how do you do, fellow gamers?” moments.
Also keep in mind, all those Blizzard people are now under Microsoft.
We need a global boycott of: WoW, Overwatch, CoD, Candy Crush, Elder Scrolls, Halo, Fable, Forza, Gears of war, etc.
Don’t forget Fallout.
If anything Phil deserves his own company. If he made the call I’m sure many he got to know at Xbox and Microsoft would answer the call and make a new company with him
Hoping he would especially one like Valve. But it all depends on if he would be up for that and if everyone asked him to to show he would have huge support from day one
maybe the woman is actually AI as well
Cortana is that you?
Who replaced him?
Her name is in the 3rd sentence of the article posted by OP.
But, as a special treat for the lazy, her name is Asha Sharma.
So much of the Verge is paywalled these days it’s completely understandable for someone not to bother clicking through.
[I removed this link, but it linked to an archived of the article to avoid giving ad revenue to The Verge]
It isn’t hard to access and read an article without giving ad revenue or what-not to the site owners.
I would leave a flaming wreck too.
I’ll not sure Spencer had been doing a great job, but this feels incredibly abrupt and makes me wonder if Xbox’s next generation hardware plans are cancelled in favor of a software and AI approach. The new CEO being an AI suit makes me think they want to take shit it a very different direction.
Microslop is making a number of baffling choices that were influenced by huffing the farts of Satya and other AI fools. Asha Sharma is in no way capable of running Xbox anywhere but into the ground (not like she’ll have to do much, given the state of Xbox). Phil Spencer retiring from Microslop is probably a move he made knowing they are going to continue their downward spiral. Sarah Bond resigning from her position is a curious one. I wonder if Microslop execs talked future plans for Xbox with her, and felt so stunned by their incompetence, Sarah decided to abandon the Xbox division. There are other factors likely involved, but, I doubt we’ll be privy to those details just yet. When the postmortem of Xbox is released…The people involved might talk about, at least I hope so.
As I don’t feel Xbox as a console has a future, my current plan is to abandon Xbox as a platform. It will take time because right now buying an upgraded Gaming PC will be difficult, due to the insanity of hardware prices. For now, I’ll have to simply save my money and bide my time.
I don’t doubt Sarah was being brought up as Phils replacement, but Satya wanted an AI puppet at the helm, so Asha got inserted. Being passed over for her ascent, Sarah had no real choice than to leave.
I quit Xbox after 3 Xbox 360s got the red ring of death just after the warranty expired. I’ll never go back even though I want clockwork revolution and a couple other exclusives.
What the fuck is “overmuch”?
I edited that to: “not like she’ll have to do much, given the state of Xbox”. I was typing faster than my brain could think…It’s been a day.
Haha gotcha. I actually searched it up and overmuch is a word. Hadn’t heard that one before.
Yeah, ‘overmuch’ is a very useful word, great for shortening sentences! As an avid reader, I do see plenty of words…Rarely, do I use them because following KISS is for the best!
PlayStation outlives yet another competitor.
Another?
Sega Saturn and Dreamcast, 3DO, Atari Jaguar just to name a few. Soon will be adding Microsoft’s XBOX to the list.
3DO and Atari were never really competitors. They were minor players in the console market that were already considered unsuccessful by the time the PS1 was released.
Sega is one company. Sony has outlasted one competitor, which makes it odd to say “yet another” almost 30 years later.
That’s a nice opinion but Atari and 3DO were selling consoles at the same time PS1 was out. That makes them competitive, no matter how large the margin.
Sure, Sony “outlived” two minor competitors that were already failing when the PS1 released.
Much like how I outlived actor Carey Grant, who was 80 years old when I was born. That’s definitely how I’d phrase that.
But hey, those examples were “just to name a few”, so there must be more, right?
But seriously, the way your original comment was phrased makes it sound like Sony is some kind of console war juggernaut, outlasting its many competitors over decades. The reality is that Sega folded to Sony and Nintendo back in the early aughts, and then it was 25 stable years of having three big console makers, and that’s it.
That’s all I’m saying.
Sega, I guess?
Phil was probably the last thing keep Xbox from fully imploding. You could tell he was an actual gamer that cared about the Xbox as a games console and not whatever Frankenstein they are going to turn it into.
It’s sad but Xbox had a really good run. Xbox won’t exist beyond the next console generation, it may not even make it that far before it just becomes gamepass.
Yeah, I’m glad I’m not alone in having that vibe about Phil.
They’re gonna fuck up Forza Horizon 6 and Fable, aren’t they? I was cautiosly optimistic about those two under Phil, but I’m pretty sure they’re doomed now
Microsoft needs to have a sit down with Sega on how to become a decent 3rd party developer.
I was going to say “good riddance”, but considering that his replacement is a former AI exec… Lol.
To be fair, I don’t envy anyone who is put in charge of the mess that is Xbox right now.
I wonder how much of this is the big bet that they placed on buying up Activision Blizzard (plus other studios) and not being able to show enough growth on Gamepass?
And now of course, with skyrocketing hardware costs, and the ripple effects of tariffs before that, even putting MS’s preoccupation with cloud services and AI to one side, the console business probably isn’t the money spinner it once was.
After Mattrick, they probably shouldn’t have promoted internally from the executive class that went along with the pivot of internal studios to kinect and home theater media center. They needed leadership that knew how to deliver quality games on time. Saw Sony hit its stride mid-PS3 era with the advent of the AAA narrative action adventure game and could never adjust to that. I know American company, but maybe they should have looked to Sega, Capcom, Koei Tecmo to lead Xbox game studios and someone else to lead hardware and services. Xbox was at its best when it was paying for timed exclusives in the 360 era from third parties and funding 2nd party exclusives. Their internal studio production has been weak for like 20 years. Halo, Gears, Forza Motorsport, Fable has fallen to all of them in the doldrums and Forza Horizon being their only high tier Xbox associated IP now. I’d take someone from Square Enix today to lead Xbox studios today. The last decade they’ve churned out games even though mostly not AAA, they’re mostly solid games and satisfy a lot of niches like Dragon Quest Monsters. Square Enix games are oddly experimental and creative for such a large publisher. Something Xbox sorely lacks. Master Chief is barely surviving as a console mascot and that’s practically all they have at this point. Conker and Banjo are irrelevant with how they’ve handled those IPs
How sad for Obsidian Entertainment to go the same way as Black Isle Studios… but they probably will when the Xbox division completely fails.
A simultaneous retirement/resignation says to me that the two of them were asked to do something very stupid or very unethical. And they’ve stomached a lot of unethical lately.
Microslop definitely
askedtold him to use AI.
Phil if you somehow read this then please make a new company!!! Many will follow you from Microsoft and Xbox to whatever you decide to do. It is time for a new company similar to Valve to rise up!
If you don’t want to then that makes sense. You have enough at Xbox and with Microsoft over the years
Thanks for doing your best under the slop that Microslop has dumped on Xbox over all these years. Salute!
Phil sucks. Gamepass was a failure. He should have focused on getting their studios to make actual good games.
Please explain yourself. I’m not going to judge you, I’m genuinely curious where you got this perception of Phil Spencer from?
From my perspective, he was in charge during the fall of Xbox. There may have been a few good decisions he made, like backwards compat or whatever, but on the whole he destroyed Xbox. I don’t understand how some people can simultaneously be pissed at all the terrible decisions that company has been making for over a decade while also glazing the guy in charge of making those decisions.
If Xbox wasn’t part of the monopolist that is Microsoft, they would’ve gone out of business after the Xbox One. Instead, as is usually the case for orgs/people like this, they’ve been able to fail upwards all while dragging the entire gaming industry through the dirt (eg the horrible Activision acquisition, among many others). It’s actually incredible how, despite not even needing to worry about competitive pressures, Xbox still failed so badly.
So again, what circumstances have lead you to see Phil Spencer as anything other than an incompetent moron?
Phil Spencer was a shit CEO. He absolutely cucked the hell out of Microsoft’s gaming division by releasing all their exclusives on competing platforms and eliminating any reason to even buy an Xbox Series S or X console.
Newsflash: Exclusivity sells games consoles. It’s why you don’t see Sony pushing their IPs on other platforms other than in very exceptional circumstances, i.e. Helldivers 2 and MLB The Show. In the case of Helldivers 2 it was their biggest and only successful live-service release in recent memory, and The Show likely got ported elsewhere due to pressure from Major League Baseball themselves.
