Considering that before Phil they had a lot more exclusives (X360 and start of X1), do you really prefer his direction?

I think any major change in direction for any platform has to come from years of planning, development, etc, so I feel like Phil has done what he can with limited means, meanwhile trying his best to spin Xbox's precarious position as best as he can. I mostly blame Mattrick and the company as a whole for where the brand is now, though I agree that there's possibly a lot more Phil could be doing (though I'm not going to pretend to have any special insight, I'm not a CEO) which is why I consider most of what he says to be hollow. A lot of his words aren't being followed with action, and I've heard pretty significant exaggerations this entire gen from a lot of people on the Xbox team ("Halo 5 has the best campaign we've ever delivered"; "this is our best holiday lineup in Xbox history"; "Sea of Thieves is the most ambitious game we've ever published" to name a few). All I can compliment him on is attempting to set the tone that games are what're important to the brand, and thats something.

To be clear, I don't think Xbox is anywhere close to getting back to where it once was (in my mind, first few years of X360 were PEAK xbox), but a lot of the factors in that demise came before Phil took over, and he hasn't had a fresh gen to really set his own tone from the get go. I question how much he could have reasonably done with such a disaster of a launch.

Xbox magazine, xbox world , xbox official fanbase site and xboxforlife.com ?

Don Mattrick, from 2007 to 2013 (6 years) have released much more exclusives to Xbox than Phil.

Some people may put more value to the talking and say Phil is better than Don, but X360 as a HW and SW was overall in a much stronger position under him than X1 is under Phil.

Little by little Phil masks are dropping down.

After several years of Phil being the head of MS. A lot of PR methods are really showing. So here is a quick look into good old Phil's notebook on how to PR.

1- always say that first party is important on twitter. And say stuff like you want to improve it and build it further. Never say something specific

2- say the word "games" as much as possible during interviews or while on stage. (Note: emphasis the pronunciation of the word as much as possible without looking weird)

3- at the start of each year, tweet something about E3 and start hyping it by saying you're "looking forward to it it" and you're "doing something different", something similar to that, without actually saying anything specific

3- when asked about a short coming. Always be vague, never say something specific, and try to put in phrases like "what's good for the industry" in there.

4- congratulate Sony every now and then, and compliment Nintendo every now and then to seem like a "nice guy"

5- leave the massive spinning and shit talk for greenberg. 

6- wear t-shirts with game logos on them (try to make them indie games as much as possible) so people thibk you give a shit. 

I wish someone would make a ken kutaragi thread. It would be savage. 

That's certainly a reasonable way to look at it. I still think a lot of the best aspects of the early Mattrick years were probably inherited from previous leadership, and you only really started to see the effects of his influence later when Xbox started to focus more on Kinect, TV, and perpetuating waning franchises under studios that are shadows of those that made those franchises famous. Just my perspective though. First Party exclusives aren't the only measure of success in my book, as a lot of factors lead to a diverse and healthy library.

So you wished that Sony and Nintendo were more about talking and less about doing?

Since we don't have much insight on the real toughts of them and considering Don Matrick were EA then of course it's plausible that he had a good inheritance that he spoiled and delivered a bad situation that Phil is still turning around. Hope that when X2 launch they have a much healthier situation

The next Xbox is definitely going to reveal a lot about Phil's intentions, and whether or not there's any weight behind his game-centric PR shpeal. I'm not entirely convinced the department has what it takes to get anywhere without world-class first party studios, and my out-there pessimistic prediction is that MS probably wants to fold Xbox into a more centralized PC gaming initiative eventually. I have a suspicion a lot of the higher-ups at MS believe the traditional console market isn't the future of the industry, regardless of how well Sony and Nintendo do, and want to try more "forward-thinking" approaches. To me that would help explain why so much has been getting cancelled and shut down. I can't help but feel like MS as a whole is slowly trying to pull investment from the scene, with Phil put in front of the masses trying to reassure everyone that it's all fine.