Phil Spencer has turned around Xbox and is setting up a comeback. Apart from the obvious: Game Pass. He’s also lead the charge for cross play, backwards compatibility (that was his first initiative when getting his position), plus expanded the first party studios for Xbox in general where there’s now more studios than Sony and (I believe) Nintendo. Taking a platform that was pushed aside for so long under Microsoft’s leadership and then finally getting the CEO on board, with the mythical war chest opened as well is definitely something worth recognizing. He’s had the biggest impact on any company by far in recent history.
Even looking at Halo: Infinite. Old Microsoft would have just released it. The fact that they were okay delaying it shows how much they changed and how much control he has in allowing it now.
Also every acquisition has said that they went with Microsoft because of the promise that they can do what they want. Double Fine just recently posted an update talking about their personal plans finishing up Psychonauts 2, but also noted how they would achieve them without crunch as they do not want to do that as a studio.
Another thing to note is that Spencer is actually fully realizing Bill Gates' original plan for Xbox. When the original Xbox released, Gates wanted it to be an extension of the PC, where it had a shared ecosystem. J Allard told Gates that it was impossible (and received much backlash from Gates due to that), but now it's finally coming to realization. Xbox is no longer restricted to a specific piece of hardware, it can now mean PC (or your phone, or mobile device, or maybe even your TV). Anything within the ecosystem is 'Xbox' and there is still dedicated hardware that is brilliantly built that will also play strictly games from that ecosystem as well.
The next things on Spencer's agenda is continuing to see that vision realized with xCloud and then the games that will start coming out in consistent waves from all the studios that have been recently acquired (I expect that to start in 2021, but 2022 and onward it'll really ramp up).
Obviously as far as this award goes, no one.. including Spencer.. is thinking about customers first and foremost other than what they can do for the company. It's just that he's the one that has done the best for his customers because he's seeing that as a winning strategy and I'm okay with recognizing that. I mean, I keep getting Game Pass Ultimate at incredibly low deals and the games it includes with the value it entails is just insane to me. I've probably spent $160 in total for 5 years of GPU. So $32/year for Xbox Live Gold + all the games that Game Pass gives + EA Play + xCloud streaming. So yeah, I'm okay with him getting this award.
There's literally no one else in the games industry that deserves it more than him, even if we were to just include this year because there's been a lot he's done this year too.
www.videogameschronicle.com
Danjin44
wrote above.
