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plip.plop on 21 September 2014
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MS made a mistake launching a system with the wrong guy. Mattrick concentrated too much on making a HTPC/Steambox. Too ambitious for the casual gamer, and majority of the public that still think games, and other entertainment should be separate. While more people are starting to use internet entertainment (Hulu, Netflix) people know they can connect their laptop or tablet by chromecast to watch it on their TV instead of buying a $400-500 machine.
MS corrected their mistake by removing Mattrick, and his vision for the X1. with Spencer. Will this pay off? It has shown to be working so far, but goodwill and policy reversals only go so far. Like others have said MS needs to start creating new IP's that will make their system more appealing.

Sony did the same thing last gen with the launch of the PS3. Kutaragi was replaced by Shuhei Yoshida during the launch of the PS3 by Kaz Hirai.

Shuhei has already said he like Spencer much more than Mattrick, as he can understand what Spencer says. There is mutual respect between the two. I think the appeal for both of these guys to their user base is that they are straight shooters. Which is nice to have especially dealing with consumers as fickle as gamers.

Ken Kutaragi made the PS3 horrible for developers by creating a hard to work on system, and put it in a negative light with consumers with the high price. The really nice thing about the PS3 was it was also a very forward thinking system (their slogan was "It only does everything").

Mattrick, and MS thought they could do it better than Sony this time, but did the exact same thing High price, and difficult to develop system that wants to do everything.

I think praise need to go out to the CEO's that replaced Mattrick, and Kutaragi early enough to be able to reverse policies.
PS3 floundered in the beginning for awhile, but came on strong in the end. Hopefully, MS can do the same to keep competition alive, so we as gamers benefit from these companies competing for our dollars in the form of great games, and services.