Last year, Microsoft had two big catastrophes. One of these issues lingers today, coming in the form of Halo: The Master Chief Collection. At first, the game suffered from a huge number of glitches and bugs. While developer 343 Industries has done their best to provide fixes for each hiccup, many problems are still present in the game today.
The other big problem facing Microsoft's Xbox brand was the Christmas day DDoS attack, which was also directed at competitor Sony. Neither company was prepared for this, which resulted in both Xbox Live and Playstation Network being disabled for multiple days. Xbox head Phil Spencer recently spoke to Gamespot, discussing these two blemishes of 2014.
Spencer first brought up The Master Chief Collection and its release debacle:
"Going into the launch our internal processes and testing methodologies had told us that we had a game that was ready to launch," Spencer said. "Then, when it launched, we learned some things we didn't know going into the launch–which is something we need to get better at. You're always going to learn something when you launch; you can't simulate the real-world environment completely inside of any sterile, fixed environment."
Spencer then talked about the hacking issues:
"Our commitment to Xbox One customers is to make sure our service is robust and reliable,"
Spencer even voiced sympathy for Sony, whose service was arguably more crippled than Microsoft's during the DDoS attacks:
"I don't think it's great when PSN goes down," Spencer said. "It doesn't help me. All it does is put the fear and distrust from any gamer that's out there, so I look at all of us together as this is our collective opportunity to share what we can about what we're learning and how things are growing. Those conversations happen, which I think is great."
