To say that Xbox head Phil Spencer has been under a “lot of scrutiny” over the last year or so would be an understatement. First and foremost, the Xbox brand hasn’t had the success that he hoped it would have, and he’s had to “double talk” to try and make it sound good. Just as important, it took forever for the Activision Blizzard deal to go through, and now there will be a “growing period” before things start taking hold for the Xbox brand to grow through the new acquisitions. But just as important, a series of emails from a few years back leaked that showed Phil and his “thoughts” on the gaming community in a whole new light.
That brings us to a new interview that he did with Famitsu that will likely show him in ANOTHER new light in the eyes of fans. Why is that? In the interview, he claimed that “going forward,” the Nintendo and Sony communities will be part of Xbox’s:
“Just as I consider ROG Ally and Steam Deck as part of the Xbox community, it’s necessary to consider the numerous Nintendo Switch and PlayStation users as part of the Xbox community going forward.”
Um… we’re not really sure what he’s going for here. We think that he means that “going forward,” they’ll try to appeal to these communities and attempt to bring their members to the Xbox systems. But the twist with that is that some already do that, and many more are fine NOT being a part of the Xbox community.
As Spencer himself said during the FTC case surrounding the Activision Blizzard deal, the Xbox brand has basically lost every single console war it’s been in, and sometimes by a large margin! That would include this current war between the PS5 and Nintendo Switch. The Switch has been soaring since 2017, and while both the Xbox Series X/S and PS5 were hit hard by the microchip shortage, the PlayStation 5 has been able to bounce back strong, while Microsoft’s hasn’t.
It’s also important to remind people that Phil Spencer said in one of those leaked emails we mentioned that it was the “ultimate goal” of sorts to buy out Nintendo, as that would be the “highlight of his career.” He felt this would happen because their future was “only in software,” even though they “couldn’t see it yet.”
Given the state of Microsoft’s console and its games on many fronts, perhaps the reverse will be true in a few years’ time.
