Aquamarine said:
After the success of the Kinect in 2010 the higher-ups like Mattrick demanded "Games as a service" and "focus on the cloud" and "TV integration" and "Kinect 2.0." Phil was against that...but he couldn't do much about it.
This is not an argument for my points at all, Phil Spencer has been in charge of Microsoft Studios since 2008
Phil wasn't against Kinect or anything like that, he was right there with Mattrick and co at the Xbox One reveal event, he was all over it and the level of video games output from Microsoft speaks to that fact.
If you're given a managerial position, you have your say, in fact you are the one giving the orders about what games are allowed to be made or coming up with solutions to any holes in your product line, Phil has basically not done much to further Microsoft's internal output, which is evidenced by the level of 1st party output from Xbox.
That's why games like Kinect Sports Rivals, Project Spark, Fable Legends, Quantum Break, Crackdown 3, Sea of Thieves, etc. exist. They're focused on the cloud / part of the 2011-2013 mentality.
All of which Phil Spencer was in charge of making sure happened, yet nothing in the way of fresh, internally developed standard games. Microsoft weren't just about Kinect, while it's a part of their platform, they sold more XBox 360's, nowhere near as many Kinect devices, so to say that Microsoft only wanted Kinect, with very little focus on anything else, well that's just ludicrous.
Phil Spencer had all the power needed to make decisions on what video games the next platform had, a huge budget for making new studios, new IPs galore, but we haven't seen studios built to make new experiences happen from internal, first party studios.
Spencer has been leading since March 2014, so he is responsible for games greenlit in 2014-2015...which we won't see until 2017-2018 at the earliest. They had to work through all of the old Mattrick titles, but now they're pretty much done with that with cancellations and closures and releases, with a couple of stragglers left to come out (like Sea of Thieves / Crackdown).
He's been in charge of games development for 6 years prior to that, 2 years would have been plenty of time for Phil to have made internal changes to Microsoft Studios for all potential outcomes, be it Kinect games, service titles and standard AAA retail titles, but there's been basically nothing coming from MS Studios 1st party teams.
Hell even if Kinect and services were the big sell, there's been basically nothing from that, besides Kinect Sports Rivals, even if Mattrick didn't let anyone have any creative freedom and prevented anyone like Phil from doing their jobs by not letting him have any say about the kind of games needed for XBox One, Phil's still failed to fulfill that vision too.
Scalebound was one of the first games formally greenlit and put into motion under Phil Spencer's tenure. Recore was greenlit in April 2014...another game by Spencer as Head of Xbox. Again, you're not going to see them until 2017, probably. And both games are traditional games...they don't focus on the cloud or games as a service nonsense.
Scalebound isn't a 1st party game, it's being developed by Platinum Games, ReCore is being made by other 2nd party studios too, neither are 1st party games.
Phil's tenure goes back to 2008, not when he became the boss of XBox, seriously you do not get given a job like that without being able to use your own initiative to keep your platform fed with titles.
Honestly Phil spencer should be seen as just as much too blaim for the Xbox One's approach to the 8th gen as mattrick.
It's like people have forgotten how much Phil was hyping up XBox One back in May 2013, how he backed everything that was concieved for the platform, yet people act like he's making huge changes now, when the reality is very different than what Xbox fans are telling themselves is the truth.
Halo Wars 2 is another game by Spencer when job postings started showing up around May 2014.
Games just take a while to come out.
Games take time, which Phil Spencer has had plenty of to make sure Xbox One had everything it needed, but after 8 years of being in charge of video games development at Xbox Phil's doing the exact same stuff as before.
We haven't heard anything about new studios being well on their way to revealing new IPs to cover gaps in XBox One's line-up. Very few exclusives have been revealed to make Xbox One seem enticing to the overall gaming community.
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