Phil Spencer has accomplished a lot of great things during his nine plus years as head of Xbox. Under his leadership, Xbox has made incredible strides in accessibility. If the Xbox isn’t the industry leader in this, they are at the top of the list both on the software side and on the hardware side.
Game preservation, backwards compatibility, was Spencer’s first major initiative when he took over the business, and it’s been such a success that it has been normalized across the industry.
Hardware power and reliability: the Xbox One S, One X, Series X, and Series S have all been quietly powerful workhorses that have not suffered a single widespread issue, making the Xbox 360’s red ring of death and the Xbox One’s underpowered launch unit distant memories.
Value proposition: Xbox Game Pass, regardless of how you slice it, has been a resounding success for gamers.
Cloud gaming, the xCloud initiative now a bundled feature with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, lets you play your Xbox games from just about anywhere on any device.
Diversity and culture: Microsoft and its Studios now have more women and people of color in leadership roles and on development teams, taking noticeable steps to normalizing diversity in an industry whose customers come from all walks of life. Isn’t that so cool?
Unfortunately, though, Spencer has one notable black mark on his legacy: exclusive blockbuster games. Xbox has continually disappointed over the past decade in this most important area of all. It’s not that Xbox hasn’t had anything; it’s not a zero-sum game after all. But this generation was supposed to be a fresh start for Microsoft, a chance to win back the Xbox 360 customers it lost to Sony in the PS4. And so much of the groundwork had already been laid: the purchasing of many first-party new Studios, the gamer-first smart delivery feature, and the aforementioned backwards compatibility and Xbox Game Pass initiatives.
So please help me in welcoming all of our new Studios. Is this Spencer’s fault? It’s difficult to say, but I’d lean towards no, because the fact of the matter is that while video games, like sports, are part of a multi-billion dollar entertainment industry, winning and losing in the video game business isn’t as plainly black and white as it is in sports. If your favorite team loses year after year, you trade players, sign new ones, and eventually, if that’s not working, fire the head coach/manager and/or the general manager. You can’t apply that same binary logic to Phil Spencer, to Xbox Game Studios Boss Matt Booty, or anyone else in the world of games. Success is measured in a million different ways, many of which the public isn’t privy to. But it’s still fair to look at leadership and look at their track record, as well as what those around them have to say about them. Anecdotally, anyone I’ve ever talked to about Phil Spencer has expressed nothing but praise and admiration.
So if he’s not the problem, what is? Is he surrounded by yes-men who are afraid to ever disagree with him? Is Spencer himself too nice to ever fire anyone who’s not getting the job done? I’m not sure, but what I do know is that the buck ultimately stops with Phil Spencer. He’s held the job longer than anyone else, the people who built the Xbox from the ground up into a major player in the multi-billion dollar video game industry, and to Phil’s credit, he was a key part of that. Before taking over what is now Xbox Game Studios back in 2008, he earned his shot at the big chair, and by all accounts, including my own, he’s an incredibly nice person in addition to someone who worked his way up the ranks. And he’s got the receipts to show that he’s a hardcore gamer just like the rest of us, something that can’t be said about the heads of the other console makers. We know that exclusive games from our Microsoft Studios are what originally turned so many of us into Xbox fans.
Still, that steady flow of big blockbuster games continues to be a problem in the Spencer era. Lionhead shut down after an ill-fated attempt to turn Fable into a 4v1 multiplayer game, sending a pillar Xbox franchise into a decade-plus long hibernation from which it still has yet to emerge. Crackdown’s resurrection was a flop. Scalebound suffered a very public cancellation. 343 Industries has been plagued by inconsistency and inefficiency, causing, among other things, Halo Infinite to miss its launch alongside the Xbox Series X and Series S consoles. The Initiative is five years old, and its Perfect Dark reboot is absolutely nowhere in sight and, worse, reportedly plagued by development issues. Xbox gamers have also been locked out of major third-party games like Street Fighter 5, as well as both Final Fantasy 16 and Final Fantasy 7 Remake. Physical first-party releases for the many gamers who still purchase their games that way are few and far between. And now comes the unexpected face-planting of Redfall, a promising new property from Arkane, a studio with a tremendous track record up until now. It also happens to be the first Xbox exclusive release from Bethesda since Microsoft acquired them back in 2020.
Redfall was already delayed nearly a year, with Spencer tweeting at the time, “These decisions are hard on teams making the games and our fans. While I fully support giving teams time to release these great games when they are ready, we hear the feedback. Delivering quality and consistency is expected, and we will continue to work to better meet those expectations.” With Phil’s own words from a year ago in mind, it makes Redfall’s launch even more disappointing. Now, to his credit, he took full responsibility for Redfall’s disappointing launch this week, also admitting that IGN was lied to regarding the IGN first gameplay video of Redfall that we posted last month that drew a hugely negative reaction, telling Kinda Funny, “I’ll even go back to the Redfall videos on IGN showing the game running at 60 frames per second on PC. At that point, knowing the game was going to run at 30 frames per second at launch on console, we have to be transparent about what we’re showing, that what we’re showing is representative of what our console customer, our most committed customer to our brand, financially committed, what they’re gonna see, what they’re gonna play, and that transparency just has to get better. Never seen anything like it. Not the Redfall I remember.”
Redfall may just be one game and, as such, isn’t really what my frustration or any other Xbox owner’s frustration is about. For many Xbox gamers, it’s the latest nick in a death by a thousand cuts. It exhausted any last bit of patience and goodwill that Microsoft had remaining, which now puts an incredible burden on Starfield, fairly or not. And it’s definitely not fair to Todd Howard and the Bethesda Game Studios development team, but it is what it is. Everything is now riding on Starfield, and by that, I mean any chance Xbox has to rehabilitate its sticky “Xbox has no blockbuster exclusive games” reputation. If Starfield falters or disappoints in any way come September 6th, then it may be that consumer confidence ends up being permanently lost. Worse perhaps is the likely downstream effect of Redfall’s “straw that broke the camel’s back” stumble
. It may understandably rattle any Xbox gamer’s faith in Starfield or any big Xbox games being able to stick its desperately needed landing in the first place, which will only add more pressure to a studio whose incredible open worlds aren’t exactly known for their lack of bugs, especially at launch.
Things around a trip over what a waste, leave. Why do these mistakes keep happening to Xbox but not to Sony or Nintendo? Is talent an issue? Seemingly not, the revolving door at 343 Industries aside, there have been few high-profile departures at the Xbox Studios. New or old, only The Coalition’s Rod Ferguson, who left to take over the Diablo franchise at Blizzard in 2020, and Shinji Makami, who recently exited from Tango Gameworks, come to mind.
Is it resources? Again, by all accounts, the answer is no. Double Fine was given plenty of extra time and thus money to help Psychonauts 2, once a crowdfunded game on a shoestring budget, reach its full fantastic potential. 343 had who knows how many tens of millions more dollars poured into it when Microsoft wisely decided to try not to force it onto store shelves alongside the Series X in November of 2020. Rare was given the time and the long leash to turn Sea of Thieves from the bare-bones concept it launched as into a fully fleshed out live-service game with millions of players. Bethesda Game Studios was given an extra 10 months of development time on Starfield after Todd Howard had confidently called his release date shot of 11/11/22 a full 18 months early.
The fact is Microsoft is a trillion-dollar company that should not and apparently is not pinching pennies with its projects. But speaking of money, is complacency our studios taking their foot off the gas after getting their big Microsoft payday? Well, Playground was acquired by Microsoft in 2018 and then raised its own high bar again with Forza Horizon 5, taking home IGN’s Game of the Year award for 2021 in the process. More recently, Tango’s literal surprise hit, Hi-Fi Rush, does not seem like the work of a team that’s simply going through the motions. Rockstar move. Could it be timing? Is the timeline associated with making great games just so misaligned with expectations that the only way to ship something to satisfy increasingly frustrated fans is to rush these games out? Perhaps Xbox leadership saw Redfall’s likely outcome early on and chose to cut bait so that the talented team at Arkane Austin could sooner move on to a new project and get a fresh start. Maybe they felt like they simply had to get something out there as soon as possible given the ever-increasing pressure from fans to deliver some kind of big first-party exclusive.
In the end, it’s probably not Spencer’s head that should be on the chopping block, or any single person’s for that matter. Instead, the collective Xbox team must do better, because the bottom line is that Xbox fans, customers who’ve spent many hundreds if not thousands of dollars in the Xbox ecosystem and been nothing but patient, are tired of being told the great games are coming, just wait, year after year, and they deserve better than what the Xbox Series generation has delivered so far.
With the disappointing launch of Redfall, Xbox Series X’s big Arkane exclusive, Xbox continues to under-deliver where it matters most: video game exclusives. Why does this keep happening to Xbox and who, if anyone, is to blame?
#IGN #Gaming #Xbox
Ah yes, more women and "people of color" as leaders. Because that affects anything?
Hehehehehehe, I'm In Danger!
– XBOX
Xbox just buys studios and ruins them. Rare, anyone
The fact that DEI is brought up explains exactly why Microsoft is a distant 3rd and can’t create a system-defining game to save its life.
Peace and Christ bless!
Have a nice day everyone!
[25-07-2023_22_33.]
Microsoft: Must buy more studios!!
Fans: We want games though.
Microsoft: did you hear something?…MORE STUDIOS!!
I’ve been with Xbox since the very beginning and when it comes to hardware, features and subscriptions they’re killing it. However they lack the exclusives. They just need to take the time to make a killer exclusive. They have the potential to be great but it’s just not showing.
Doesnt matter how many videos or fans make on youtube. Telling, please Ms make more exclusive games. They still gonna go there on way and crash this to the ground like they have done the last decade
Why is IGN critiquing another company LMAO
Why won't ign go away
Sony made the Playstation work because they INVESTED in the brand, and that means going beyond throwing cash around. They cultivated an identity and gaming experience that is synonymous with Playstation titles, which are usually action heavy, story-driven releases pushing high graphics fidelity. And they did so by purchasing studios over time or even creating their own. Naughty Dog was am independent studio for 15 years before being bought by Sony and Insomniac Games was independent for 30 years before Spider-Man dropped. They didn't throw $80 billion on two major publishers to give them games. Microsoft needs to take a more hands ON approach to what they're putting out there because the inconsistent quality is really hurting their brand and the value of the 40+ developers they now own.
9:05 Is it resources?! According to the last article regarding Redfall's failure… YES!!!
Facts
Let me just say as an avid car lover and racing game enthusiast. Forza Horizon 5 had no business being GOTY. Not even close.
Maybe the diversity is the problem, choosing less qualified for PR points. Creativity can't be controlled
You keep bringing up how phill is a gamer first and businessman second but I’m pretty much convinced that’s a disadvantage
Sonys showcase 😂
You skipped over the Phil Spencer comment of him saying great games don't matter
People want a freaking aaa mature third person single player open world freaking banger. WHY IS THIS SO FREAKING HARD ? PLAYSTATION DOES IT EVER FUKN TIME. YALL CAN'T MAKE ONE??? JESUS I'M DONE AT THIS POINT
DEI is the anchor around every organization’s neck. Hire only based on merits. Japan and China don’t worry or care about DEI in they’re countries and they are highly productive and successful.
They should have bought indie game studios
Problem is, why do they keep focusing on just one game at a time, you can't tell me there aren't enough people to work on more at a time, like Ubisoft do, farm out the work, why has Skyrim been out nearly 12 yrs and still no Elder Scrolls 6 (I read its due 2 years after Starfield, but WHY ??) same with Fable !!!
One game won't save Xbox. Sony is atleast 10 yrs ahead at minimum and that gap is growing fast.
Xbox is DC and Sony is Marvel
Watching the downfall from PlayStation nation, yikes. 👀
This is what happens when you think money is all that matters when it comes to success. Microsoft has way more money but Sony has the talent. That’s what makes successful brand not throwing money at projects.
Keep ignoring all those red flags Xbox tards PlayStation is winning yet again 😂😂😂😂😂
Microsoft have run out of excuses. Even delays no longer matter their games still end up being unfinished crap.
The video stinks of copium
Xbox has halo and minecraft franchises. Both sold 300mln combined. Uncharted plus last of us franchises sold barely 50mln.
Maybe PC is one big problem for the XBox itself, especially the titles that do launch on both systems.
Without the PC (or at least a one year exclusiveness to XBox) not only the devs would concentrate more onto that console, the PC players would as well! Titles like Starfield, Forza Horizon 5, Elder Scrolls 6, Gears 5, HiFi Rush should be exclusive on the XBox console and not be also available on PC.
Because that is the argument from Playstation buyers: they can play the Microsoft games also on PC which on the other hand is the selling point for a Playstation: no PC port for at least 2 years.
Also the supervision of the game studios should be improved. It seems like quality management is way better at Sony when it comes to polished games. A focus away from additional PC ports could help here, too.
4:06 is factually incorrect. Jim Ryan has been at PlayStation since the launch of the PS1.
If @ign actually spent time researching instead of applying teeth whitening, they would know this.
Why Won’t Xbox’s Big Game Problem Go Away ?? the Problem wont go Away as they have no Games and blew the budget on the Activision Deal and plus games are $70