Spencer leaving Microsoft: Yay!
Spencer being replaced by a Marketing Exec who leads an AI division: FUUUUUUCK
this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2026
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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.
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maybe the woman is actually AI as well
Cortana is that you?
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Crazy how Microsoft spent the GDP of a decent sized country on acquiring game developers to bolster Xbox, then gave that strategy about 25 months to actually work before deciding "nevermind, pivot to AI then sell it for parts."
The CEO gets a bonus if he increases the stocks value. They dont care if its actually profitable, as long as they get paid before it fails.
They really fucked up on their marketing by saying everything is an Xbox. Confusing non-gamers, annoying real gamers, and disappointing aspiring gamers.
I wonder if the incoherent Xbox names hurt them too. I'm not into Xbox, but I couldn't tell you what is the latest model, or which model follows which. This is a barrier for entry to the ecosystem.
"mom, I want the new Xbox for Christmas" "Youve got a tablet and a TV, the commercials say you already have 2"
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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.
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
I wonder if this is a huge demotion for the AI guy. AI teams in Microsoft are "good" right now, I wonder if he fucked up in some way and they put him on xbox.
Yeah I don’t know. The knee jerk reaction Is “hey make Xbox have more AI”. She at least has the sense to have her first press release say “we’ll have no AI slop in our games” but we’ll see if that lasts.
CoD has been caught using AI art already.
The thing about that press release is that it fairly cleverly doesn't say "no AI." It says no slop. She'll push AI, it'll create slop (as always), but she'll argue it isn't slop and is actually great.
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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.
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.
It's already just a brand, Xbox is just their gaming brand. Xbox Game Pass isn't limited to Xbox hardware. The first Xbox branded computers not made by Microsoft are already available (Asus ROG Xbox Ally). The real question is how long will Microsoft make hardware under the Xbox brand.
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
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Considering how the person replacing Spencer has been known from leading Microsoft's AI division and isn't much of a gamer, this doesn't make Xbox's future rosy. Dwindling sales, large layoffs and RAM prices skyrocketing... I highly doubt they can build a competitive console.
Hey don't discount them that much, they also can't make games either. They're going for full on business-only approach, consumers are not a priority for them at all anymore.
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I would leave a flaming wreck too.
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
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.
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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.
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Microsoft needs to have a sit down with Sega on how to become a decent 3rd party developer.
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