When big news breaks, we inevitably rush to put it in context and explain it. One approach is to take the news at face value and start rationalizing it. Another approach is to assume that there is a hidden logic at work and discover whatever that logic is. We have seen both regarding The big Xbox leadership shakeup and neither offers a completely satisfactory answer to the fundamental question that everyone has been asking since Friday afternoon: what is happening?
Phil Spencer retires. Of course. It makes sense. He has worked at Microsoft for 38 years. God bless him. But for this to be announced on a Friday afternoon via a series of memos and strange media “exclusives”? Strange way to end the career of one of the oldest and most visible leaders in the video games sector. Not even an official Xbox podcast episode to break the news and offer Spencer the chance to share it in a more personal way with the millions of fans who have followed his vision of Xbox and gaming for over a decade now.
A report of The edge explains some of this weirdness. The announcement was originally supposed to take place on Monday, February 23, but reports from IGN forced Microsoft to move forward its schedule. This is how most employees found out about this decision through social media. Spencer has reportedly been planning to retire for almost a year now. Microsoft has rightly chosen the end of February to pull the launch cord. Frank Shaw, Microsoft communications manager silence the rumors Last July, Spencer was retiring “in the near future,” calling them makeup. Was he lying then or now?
A celebration cut short Even stranger since Spencer will technically still remain in an advisory role throughout the summer to help with the transition as new Microsoft Gaming CEO Asha Sharma takes the reins. Will he teach him how to get all the achievements Brotato? Spencer’s public role at Xbox has seemed ceremonial for a while now, but he’s stepping down before the console’s 25th anniversary celebrations begin?
Despite all the stumbles and challenges of recent years, 2026 is supposed to be a win for Xbox. The Game Pass price hike was extremely unpopular, but it came with some big releases. Xbox console sales are plummeting, but people are intrigued by the future of PC gaming that devices like the Xbox Ally Forza Horizon 6, Gears of War: E-DayTHE Halo: Combat Evolved redo, and Fable deliver on the company’s promise of quarterly tent poles. They’re not exclusive, but they each celebrate the franchises that have defined Xbox across four console generations.
Phil Spencer tries to explain the arrival of Indiana Jones on PS5 so soon after Xbox.
“We run a business, it’s absolutely true that within Microsoft the bar is high for us in terms of the delivery we have to give back to the business” pic.twitter.com/U9z5MWxxAe
– AmericanTruckSongs9 (@ethangach) August 21, 2024
Then there’s the curious case of why Xbox president Sarah Bond resigned on Friday. Spencer’s goodbye email was the only one to mention her. Even Matt Booty, Xbox’s longtime third musketeer, refused to thank her for her service to the company and the platform. Hours after the news was published, Bond shared his statement on LinkedIn. She also didn’t mention Booty.
“This moment also presents a unique opportunity for fresh eyes and new leadership to guide the team into its next chapter,” she said. wrote. “I had the privilege of spending time with Asha over the past few weeks as we planned this transition, and I saw first-hand her deep commitment to our players, our developers, and our brand.”
A convenient scapegoat The edge reports that Bond was considered “difficult to work with” and that some employees were “relieved that Bond was leaving Microsoft.” Oddly enough, this places much of the blame for Xbox’s recent strategic errors on Xbox’s youngest leader. “Bond had tried to push mobile and cloud to console, to reach potentially millions more Xbox customers, but the result was a classic case of chasing tomorrow’s customers while neglecting today’s,” writes Tom Warren, although he later notes that Bond’s actions were “at Spencer’s direction.”
I think you’d be hard-pressed to find an Xbox fan anywhere who believes, even for a moment, that Microsoft’s “play anywhere” cross-platform pivot to cloud, PC and mobile was a bottom-up movement led by Bond rather than a top-down incentivized mandate as demanded by CEO Satya Nadella and CFO Amy Hood. aggressive growth targets and strict profit margin discipline following the acquisition of Activision Blizzard for $70 billion. Many have noticed how convenient it would be for Microsoft to blame the erosion of Xbox as a meaningful concept on someone no longer with the company and their retired boss.
Xbox President Sarah Bond responds to a question from Bloomberg’s @dinabass on why Tango Gameworks, developer of Hi-Fi Rush, was shut down. Full interview here: https://t.co/te5Trhut0Q pic.twitter.com/LGs0n9iV0t
-Tom Warren (@tomwarren) May 10, 2024
It might be easier to understand all of this if Microsoft’s own messaging about this moment and what it signals seemed more consistent than the rest of the Xbox Series X/S generation. “We will reaffirm our commitment to our core Xbox fans and players, those who have invested with us over the past 25 years, and to the developers who create expansive universes and experiences that are embraced by gamers around the world,” Sharma wrote in his introductory note to staff and fans. She promised “a renewed commitment to Xbox, starting with the console that shaped who we are.”
Then, just one sentence later, she continued to beat the “play anywhere” drum. “Gaming now exists on all devices, not within the confines of a single piece of hardware,” she wrote. “As we expand across PC, mobile, and cloud, Xbox must feel seamless, instant, and worthy of the communities we serve. We’ll break down barriers so developers can create once and reach gamers everywhere without compromise.”
A renegade mind in the age of AI No mention of other consoles like the PS5 and Switch 2. Is Microsoft ending its exclusivity experience? “I hear you”Sharma told an Xbox fan this weekend when asked about bringing back console exclusivity. Microsoft Gaming’s new CEO has said all the right things to build trust with Xbox’s core audience, but the platform has zigzagged so much over the past five years that no one will believe the words until they’re backed up by actions, and even then, what’s to stop Microsoft from pivoting again while gaming remains a mistake rounding compared to its other activities and the emerging AI market?
Affordable equipment. Killer games. These are the ingredients a console platform needs to thrive and flourish. Microsoft has shown time and time again that it is either uncommitted to or incapable of executing on these two things. Bond may have been a poor messenger for the future of Xbox, but it will take more than messaging to save the Xbox. And the way this whole Xbox reorganization has been rolled out suggests that even messaging will continue to be a mess.
“I want to return to the renegade mind that built Xbox in the first place,” Sharma wrote in his memo. One person who doesn’t believe this is a true renegade who built the first Xbox, Seamus Blackley. “I expect the new CEO, Asha Sharma, to do her job as a palliative care doctor who gently slides the Xbox into the night,” he said. said Beat of games Today. “The job of all these people is just to smoothly introduce all these business units into the new world of AI. That’s what you see here.”