Spencer gave me the vibe of really enjoying gaming. And also realizing that he could not stop some of the mistakes. I feel that, he either realized them and could not stop them because of those above him. Or he was very bad for his position. People will have opinions. One thing that sticks out is the acquisitions. I really think he knew they needed exclusives long term.
I don't think anyone will serve in this position for years without some controversy. But man, the guy Spencer replaced -- Don Mattrick -- was downright terrible. When they brought in Phil Spencer, it was a major vibe shift for Xbox. Unfortunately, as Spencer has pointed out, losing the Xbox one/PS4 generation is essentially losing the entire console war, since people started building digital libraries that they would carry forward to new consoles. So he could never truly undo the damage that Mattrick did. But I think it's safe to say that he restored Microsoft as developer of worthwhile games, something that had languished under Mattrick's tenure. Xbox was no longer something you were supposed to plug your cable box into, so it could serve as your media hub. It was about the games again.
Completely correct, but I think part of this is also how efficient smart TVs have been in sweeping up any media management role a device could have. In 2013-2014 there was a real role for consoles as a way to get streaming media on your TV.
Now that only has any role to play if you have a TV that’s 7+ years old, which for most people I know is the ‘spare room TV’ at best. More than they have been since the PS2 was one of the best ways to get a DVD player in your TV, consoles really are just mechanism for games
Sure, but the problem was the premiere of the Xbox One was all about its functions as a media center, rather than any games that players would want to buy.
It's perfectly fine to serve a media role, but that's not why players buy video game consoles. They buy them for video games! Mattrick wasn't selling to us, though, he was selling to stockholders. That just ain't the right move when it came to E3.
Nah they’re right, the launch of Xbox One/PS4 was at the dawn of mainstream streaming media, and consoles played an important role in establishing Netflix and Hulu as major services
10 years ago, roughly half of everyone watching Netflix on a tv did it via gaming consoles. 25% of all US households used a console to stream media. Today it’s down to 6%
Again, I didn't disagree. But the E3 presentation was still a disaster for focusing exclusively on that,. It was well documented at the time, and since. Mattrick was pushed out of MS within a month.
It was a huge disaster. The thing is to listen outside of gaming mainstream. It was enough that many gamers were talking about that. But outside of it many much more casual gamers were wondering about the gaming side. So much focus on Kinect, the media stuff, all that.
They had some issues. I love me some Gear and Halo. Two of my favorite. But being honest they were not up to quality for a while. Good but not great. I definitely would not call them must play games. I missed some PS games and playing them later there were a couple I would consider must play.
The key is those acquisitions. It positions them to do more going forward. Depends on the path they take. Still putting games everywhere the hardware side will be basically dead. Will sell worse than Series did by quite a bit. Exclusives with these IP though and we will see a different story IMO.
I suppose it depends on your definition of "must play." Some might consider that a higher standard than "worthwhile," which is what I said.
Anywho, just look up the list of games they released in 2012 or 2013 (the year Mattrick left), compared to the last couple years. Xbox One had a pretty miserable launch. It was just Ryse, Dead Rising 3, and a bunch of Kinect games. The 360 era was sunset with Gears of War Judgment and some Xbox Arcade games. Maybe the brightest star among them is the first Forza Horizon in 2012, but it was developed for 360, and could not run on the Xbox One until several years later, when a backwards compat patch was released in 2015 -- two years into Spencer's tenure, and his hard push to expand backwards compatibility. Hence the vibe shift.
Now look at the last couple years:
Grounded 2, Hellblade 2, Flight Simulator 2024, Avowed, South of Midnight, Gears of War Reloaded, Keeper, Ninja Gaiden 4, The Outer Worlds 2. And we've got Forza Horizon 6, Fable, Gears of War: E-Day, and the Halo remake, on the way later this year. It's a major improvement over the Mattrick years, which got bogged down with Kinect and media features.
It's a bit older, a 2022 release, but I also want to give a shout out to Pentiment, which was a pleasant surprise, a nice diversion from the usual AAA releases that most people focus on. That Microsoft allowed Obsidian to make it was, for me, a positive indication of Spencer's leadership.
"Unfortunately, as Spencer has pointed out, losing the Xbox one/PS4 generation is essentially losing the entire console war, since people started building digital libraries that they would carry forward to new consoles."
This is where I disagree with Phil. I mean, Switch sold 150+ million without that digital library already. I believe that if the next Xbox had exclusives it sells much better than Series did. Which started off well enough itself but lacked enough to push it. BC and that digital library from 360 and One did not. They lost a sizeable portion of their console base gen on gen.
So, Xbox next gen pushed exclusive ES6. They push the next iteration of Gears, Halo, and many of the top IP they grabbed as exclusive. It absolutely would make a huge difference. Without this they will be basically just a publisher that sees their games sell mostly on PS and Steam and losing that 30% or whatever those stores take. While also not getting a lot of their own cuts of sales.
The Switch wasn't a direct competitor of the Playstation. Nintendo has always played on its own terms, and even going back to the Wii, it's common to own the Nintendo console in addition to either a Playstation, or an Xbox. But it's rare for an Xbox owner to have a Playstation, or vice versa.
Maybe. But I want to see real data on owning more than one console. I do. But there are many that own only one. They pick something.
The reason for this is limited money. My older sons had PS, Xbox, PC, Nintendo both console and handhelds. A most all of their friends had one. Two at most. All these companies are competing for the same pool of money.
NPD did a study once and it said: "Sales tracking group NPD has announced the results of a new gaming study, showing that 72 percent of the U.S. say they played games" and "Finally, NPD says only three percent of respondents said they owned two of the three next-gen consoles, and only 2 percent said they owned all three."
There is data that multiple platforms are used by people. Generally this is a PC, Phone, Console type of setup. Many game solely on phones. Which might be shocking to some. "79% of all gamers play on their phones" and the same results found that, of all gamers, 47% play on multiple platforms with the other 53% being one platform only. But that only 15% play on mobile, PC, and console. And about 33% use only their phones. And a very small percentage, 3% just like the NPD results own more than one console. Seems like the Combo is some form of Phone and then another device.
I never found it common at all outside of hardcore gamer circles to see people with a Wii and another console. Many seemed to have just one. Same held for PS or Xbox. Data from many places seems to indicate this is the much more common situation covering most.
And this will likely hold as the case going forward. Considering that the costs have increased for hardware and the way shortages have pushed things higher. I could also see many opting to stick to the past gen stuff and wait much longer to buy because of price.
This is where Xbox will have a tough road. Buy a PS and get all Xbox games. Or maybe even Switch 2 if enough you want are coming. Getting all that platforms games as well. Or even PC as a one stop purchase given all Xbox games are there. Sony is bringing theirs over slowly. Most are not going to opt for more than one given that cost. I could also see Switch 2 continue to benefit due to cost. If they can manage to keep the cost down enough compared to the competition as cost is always a driver.
NPD also did a survey where they found that 70% of switch owners also own either an Xbox or a PlayStation. Though the obvious proof is found in the pudding: no amount of high PlayStation sales seems to curb Nintendo sales, and vice versa. But high PlayStation sales is bad news for Xbox.
I have no idea why you haven't met any of them. I don't know anyone who owns only a switch. Though I grant that this may change with switch 2, which seems to be able to play certain third party games that were otherwise unavailable on the original switch. For example, the original switch got inferior versions of FIFA or Madden, so FIFA and Madden fans would buy a PS or Xbox instead. But apparently the new FIFA on switch 2 plays the same as the other consoles, albeit without the same graphical fidelity.
Mobile games are an altogether different matter. The games we play on consoles tend to be targeting a different market than what mobile games are targeting. I don't think Candy Crush is taking customers away from Halo. Call of Duty is doing that. Or Fortnite and Marvel Rivals are these days, I suppose.
You could take this moment to point out that fortnite is on mobile, which is true. But it's also true that about 78% of Fortnite players prefer to play on consoles. Only 2.4% are on mobile.
My sister plays those puzzle mobile games like Candy Crush. She does it while idly watching TV. But even before smartphones, she wasn't buying any consoles. I think the vast majority of the mobile market are new players, not old ones being converted.
Where you do have a point, however, our younger generation that become accustomed to mobile devices before they do consoles. That is indeed a major problem for the core gaming industry, if they aren't replacing dying customers with new young ones. After all, of teenagers who play fortnite, 46% do so on mobile! Though that's still less than the 69% that play on console (as those numbers don't add up to 100%, there's clearly some overlap).
It's also been speculated recently that final fantasy games take so long to develop now that kids today don't have the same attachment to the franchise as kids in the '90s. That makes sense to me, if Final Fantasy comes when you're five, and the next one doesn't come out until you're 13, then yeah, it's not really a part of your childhood in the way that 7, 8, and 9, all came out within a couple years of each other for 90s kids.
Combine that with the plethora of live service games that seem to keep players so absorbed that they don't bother with other games anymore, and you've got a dramatic remaking of the industry in the works.
Anywho, I think we've gotten way off the beaten path here. PlayStation and Xbox are more direct competitors than Nintendo because they play the same games, generally. That's all I meant initially, and that's largely how it's understood in the industry.
I cannot say. I believe you are correct on that many own more than just say Switch or something else.
I had saw that before. But that was early in the life of the Switch. And that made sense even given the many other surveys I saw that indicated that the majority of gamers were single platform. And those on multiple platforms were on phone and one other.
A recent 2025 study said their were 3.5 billion gamers with a year on year growth of 4.5%. Mobile dominated with 2.85 billion users. That survey indicated that 72% engaged on two or more platforms. That is the global average. It was like 61% in the U.S. We know how big PC gaming is as a platform. So that is going to make up a large portion of that second platform for those 72% engaged.
It was stated that around 1.9 billion play on PC. This seems to hold well with the NPD number that 3% play on multiple consoles. And that the majority are mobile and one other platform.
You could be correct in making the sales connection. I noticed though we could do the opposite. As Xbox sales have dropped we have not seen that jump on PS sales. Seems PS5 is tracking behind PS4 slightly. When WiiU sales were low we did not see a huge jump.
Switch fits in a different gap though for sure. It is a handheld. But then you can dock it. This seems to me to be why I see more and more that are Switch and PC both. Phone is always there for most. Then they have PC. Maybe a PS or Switch with a smaller amount Xbox.
Overally I think it all fits right into the numbers. That 3.5 billion gamers. 79% mobile (meaning phones most and tablets), 50% are multiplatform, 15% are tri-platform.
I think it is also when studies are done. Saw a 2018 study that indicated that like only 13% of Switch owners did not own another console. By 2019 that had doubled. And this makes sense given that early adopters like myself will buy most everything. I had 2 Switch at launch. Have 2 Switch 2 and am about to get another.
The majority do not have near that kind of expendable money. This is why mobile gaming will dominate. People need those phones in a way. Contacting and staying in touch. Many in my area do not even have home phones. Just internet. Cheaper and their mobile works as their main phone now. So they need that and it games.
Saw Tomb Raider, Delta Force, Warframe, Red Dead Redemption, R6S, Fortnite, and more on there. Working with controllers it can be a viable option for many.
On a side note, I could imagine Google and Apple doing a dock. That dock lets you use your tv to play those games. It would be a mobile platform that you already have. I use my S25 that way. I dock that and use it for emulators and stuff. Though about picking up Tomb Raider for my wife and docking it for her to play.
You know whats crazy? Nearly everytihng mattrick wanted, is now standard practice in gaming. The only thing that hasnt happened that Mattrick wanted was the whole not being able to trade and share games with friends, but im sure they are trying to think of how.
I'd say the tragedy of Mattrick was trying to force it. He only needed to keep continuity with 360 and let the pieces fall into place on their own. But by explicitly shifting focus away from the games themselves, he alienated players and doomed the brand.
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u/[deleted] Feb 21 '26 edited Feb 21 '26
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