| Leynos said: What Don did was something that could have been course-corrected in a couple of years. |
I would argue that Xbox under Spencer did use the first years to course correct: "stupid forced Kinect, stupid always online" - removed; "more expensive than PS4" - corrected; "weaker than PS" - introduce Xbox One S and especially X; "Xbox has no games" - bought a ton of developers.
But from these course corrections, when building up their own counter value proposition, it simply was not good enough. And from today's perspective I would say at the core Xbox seems to be really poorly set up to manage their studios. There are some devs that just seem to do fine no matter what, but the majority apparently would need some more focused directions and assistance to make great games. Apart from Q4 2021, Xbox for the longest time this gen did not present a compelling output of new games to go and buy an Xbox for. Which is what they would have needed to make a change in the (as mentioned here) very stable console market.
But Spencer (who, as we know from FTC files thought his masterpiece might be buying Nintendo) apparently overplayed his hand with the ABK acquisition, snowballing into where we are today.
I think Matrick-era really severly wounded Xbox console business. I have in mind to have read that Microsoft was ready to shut Xbox down and that Spencer convinced Nadella with the gamepass initiative to keep it going. If that is true you would have to give him credit for once saving Xbox console business, but in the end Spencer-era definitely gave it the coup de grâce. Matrick brought it to hospital, Spencer gave it proper first aid and then failed to change the bandages and give it soemthing to eat (but brought it some flowers and and an iPad to make the hospital room nicer).
