VanCityGamer
Member
The purple place is outraged this happened during Black History Month and is mentioning "glass cliff". What does GAF think?
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[The Verge] Inside Microsoft’s big Xbox leadership shake-up
- Thread starter Topher
- Start date
FIREKNIGHT2029
Member
GHG
Member
ChorizoPicozo
Member
At 7:55, it's commented that the new person in charge of Xbox might be "set up to fail" with hardware, because that "has to fail."
under Spencer's direction
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
Ma'am, ma'am, why do you smell like balls?Oof....I get what you are trying to say, but I'm pretty sure these days Anheuser-Busch CEO is reviewing all the ads.
Zacfoldor
Gold Member
Shit's about to get dirty.
This Verge article threw Bond under the bus and gave MS haters and MS revengers a champion. By throwing Bond under the bus they created a powerful figure against what the new Xbox is and it will haunt them. Terrible PR move even if MS didn't orchestrate it.
Throwing Bond under the bus was a terrible move and it will cause a lot of inner turmoil.
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viveks86
Member
Is there a possibility that the earlier than expected retirement is personal and/or health related and no one other than Phil and Satya would actually know the real reason? Might explain why everyone is reading tea leaves without a definitive reason for exit.
If that's the case then it's just status quo with no change in plans…
MatrixReloaded101
Member
Its not "a tad" they are 100% trying to scapegoat Sarah in the article.
But what is crazy is they are setting up Asha for the same situation because with the Xbox brand and game pass being were it is now it is impossible to improve it IMO and judging by the crap Asha is posting on twitter they haven't learned their lesson the first time about talking too much.
Zacfoldor
Gold Member
If someone hated MS they could pretend to agree with them in order to damage the company.
So for every 1 that doesn't like that could be 10 will pretend they didn't, blowing this up far beyond the actual issue.
It's this and many more reasons to not shit talk former employees publicly.
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GHG
Member
Throwing her under the bus is the stupidest thing they could do because it signals "this time will be different". And it's not only that either, but Asha's bot tweet responses over the weekend point towards a new/different direction being a possibility.
They are playing a dangerous game because when it becomes evident that they will fail to deliver on that tacit agreement, we will start seeing some real late stage cult behaviour from those who were silly enough to get drawn in one last time.
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Kagoshima_Luke
Gold Member
People need to stop quoting Sharma's AI-generated memo as if it means anything for the future of Xbox, other than reinforcing that the lies will continue.
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
panda-zebra
Member
You glorious shitpost was more entertaining and intriguing than 9/10 AAA games I've played in the past 6 or 7 years.
panda-zebra
Member
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LavitzSlambert
Member
Microsoft top management wrench control away, make dumb decisions and have their gaming division execute them, further destroying the Xbox brand. Then throw Bond under the bus so they can say "haha just kidding" as if that wasn't EXACTLY what they wanted to do before realizing it would torpedo their entire brand.
This is 100% a Microsoft move. How many more times do they have to try and rug pull their customers before people learn? Doesn't anyone remember what they tried to pull with Xbox Live? Learn from their history - just turn 360 degrees and walk away.
This is 100% a Microsoft move. How many more times do they have to try and rug pull their customers before people learn? Doesn't anyone remember what they tried to pull with Xbox Live? Learn from their history - just turn 360 degrees and walk away.
Kenneth Haight
Member
"It's all Don Mattrick's fault, he destroyed the Xbox."
"Phill Spencer arrived and restored order, saved the Xbox, he's a true gamer, plays a lot and interacts with and follows Xbox "fans" on Twitter."
"It's all Sarah Bond's fault, she destroyed the Xbox."
"Asha Sharma arrived and restored order, saved the Xbox, she's a true gamer (she has GT), plays a lot and follows Xbox "fans" on Twitter."
How tiresome, it's always the same nonsense with Microsoft. They really think that Xbox "fans" are a bunch of losers, lonely and needy people who need validation and attention from Xbox executives.
"Phill Spencer arrived and restored order, saved the Xbox, he's a true gamer, plays a lot and interacts with and follows Xbox "fans" on Twitter."
"It's all Sarah Bond's fault, she destroyed the Xbox."
"Asha Sharma arrived and restored order, saved the Xbox, she's a true gamer (she has GT), plays a lot and follows Xbox "fans" on Twitter."
How tiresome, it's always the same nonsense with Microsoft. They really think that Xbox "fans" are a bunch of losers, lonely and needy people who need validation and attention from Xbox executives.
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Jaybe
Member
Jez straight in defending his bean Queen
Imagine her interviewing for her next job and that's the top result when they search her background
SPRINGDALE, Ark. – August 7, 2025 – Tyson Foods, Inc. (NYSE: TSN) today announced the appointment of Sarah Bond as a new independent director on its board, effective immediately.
panda-zebra
Member
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
ChorizoPicozo
Member
I didn't even know what's that
Jaybe
Member
This random leaker guy thinks current internal employees under her were going to trash her to while she still had power over their paycheque?
archangelmorph
Gold Member
Utterly bollocks hit piece.
Phil presided over the demise of Xbox years before Sarah was even in the picture.
Sales were slipping during Xbox One era.
So much so MSFT moved away from publishing direct console sales figures in their earnings calls, rolled all their sales into the wider aggregate MSFT consumer electronics sales to pump the numbers, and announced they were focusing on MAUs as the premier performance KPI to try to convince the market analysts that they were still in the game and competing against Sony.
They launched the Xbox Series X|S and fucked up the publishing launch planning so bad they had no exclusive launch games for well over 18 months.
Fuck up after fuck up and eventually Phil cottoned onto the desperate attempt to try to save the brand by going on a spending spree for 3rd party publishers, in a bid to lock up exclusives away from Sony. That culminated in the anti-trust shenanigans around the Activision Blizzard M&A; where their ultimate gamble (to try to lock Sony out of CoD) failed spectacularly, as regulators forced them to commit to multiplatform, as well as positioning the company outside of Xbox and directly under the parent MSFT entity structure.
In the end "This is an Xbox" was nothing more than Phil accepting defeat, pulling up and positioning Sarah as a patsy to take the wrap for a strategy of "we're doing a Sega but we don't want to accept the rep hit of admitting it to the market, so we're pretending we're not, whilst basically using this as a veneer to try shroud our efforts to wind down the hardware biz and ramp up software distribution horizontally". This is "managed decline" back to front.
The failure of Xbox has always been laid at Phil's feet.
Not because he's been so desperately incompetent, but because MSFT never really managed to wrap their heads around the value of a focused strategy of putting games first, building a strong stable of world class games studios and really pushing hard of empowering creative freedom to let them drive consumer value and rake in the commercial gains (this was Sony's strategy up until "we must GaaS all the things"). But also because Sony and Nintendo outmanoeuvred them at every turn for decades. They never really had a chance to catch up after losing their head start the Sony PS3 launch fuck up afforded them during the start of the Xbox360 era (even then they had their missteps; RRoD anyone??)
Phil presided over the demise of Xbox years before Sarah was even in the picture.
Sales were slipping during Xbox One era.
So much so MSFT moved away from publishing direct console sales figures in their earnings calls, rolled all their sales into the wider aggregate MSFT consumer electronics sales to pump the numbers, and announced they were focusing on MAUs as the premier performance KPI to try to convince the market analysts that they were still in the game and competing against Sony.
They launched the Xbox Series X|S and fucked up the publishing launch planning so bad they had no exclusive launch games for well over 18 months.
Fuck up after fuck up and eventually Phil cottoned onto the desperate attempt to try to save the brand by going on a spending spree for 3rd party publishers, in a bid to lock up exclusives away from Sony. That culminated in the anti-trust shenanigans around the Activision Blizzard M&A; where their ultimate gamble (to try to lock Sony out of CoD) failed spectacularly, as regulators forced them to commit to multiplatform, as well as positioning the company outside of Xbox and directly under the parent MSFT entity structure.
In the end "This is an Xbox" was nothing more than Phil accepting defeat, pulling up and positioning Sarah as a patsy to take the wrap for a strategy of "we're doing a Sega but we don't want to accept the rep hit of admitting it to the market, so we're pretending we're not, whilst basically using this as a veneer to try shroud our efforts to wind down the hardware biz and ramp up software distribution horizontally". This is "managed decline" back to front.
The failure of Xbox has always been laid at Phil's feet.
Not because he's been so desperately incompetent, but because MSFT never really managed to wrap their heads around the value of a focused strategy of putting games first, building a strong stable of world class games studios and really pushing hard of empowering creative freedom to let them drive consumer value and rake in the commercial gains (this was Sony's strategy up until "we must GaaS all the things"). But also because Sony and Nintendo outmanoeuvred them at every turn for decades. They never really had a chance to catch up after losing their head start the Sony PS3 launch fuck up afforded them during the start of the Xbox360 era (even then they had their missteps; RRoD anyone??)
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HeisenbergFX4
Gold Member
And likely signed an NDA with a nice check under the table so we never hear her side
GHG
Member
His followers don't like what's being said.
They're so used to him lying to them, him gaslighting them in to thinking Phil is king and that everything is amazing at Xbox that they are now getting whiplash.
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DenchDeckard
Moderated wildly
Yeah, I'm kinda not feeling this vibe I'm getting from this now.
This whole "fire the strong black woman, it's her fault" feels wrong, man. It's getting spread everywhere too. That is not fair on her.
This whole "fire the strong black woman, it's her fault" feels wrong, man. It's getting spread everywhere too. That is not fair on her.
GHG
Member
It's already started with some cringe mofos based on her Stephen Lobo's and Mia Khalifa's love-child looks alone.
Well at least that explains why they are all so excited for her to inevitably fuck them.
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VanCityGamer
Member
We think she is being blamed because she is black?
DenchDeckard
Moderated wildly
Not me saying that, there's been comments around that she's basically being glass cliffed and it looks more and more like it as the day progresses...or it's gaining more traction from what I've seen.
Maybe, I'm imagining it.
PeteBull
Gold Member
I think we need to dig deeper here, we know mattrick was total failure, right underneath him worked phil, who got promoted after mattrick got laid off, then was allowed to run wild for over 11 years destroying xbox console brand with all kinds of shit, now on top we got DEI Sarah who obviously was terrible and shouldnt ever get such an important job, and at last we got DEI Indian AI female xbox gaming ceo, who again shouldnt get the job either.
Now to sum it all up, we can tell its constant supercombo of terrible decisions chained into gigafail, gotta ask ourselfs who is common denominator here, who is the link that binds all those terrible occurences together and who was in power all this time (from feb 2014 as MS CEO but before that
Mr
Now to sum it all up, we can tell its constant supercombo of terrible decisions chained into gigafail, gotta ask ourselfs who is common denominator here, who is the link that binds all those terrible occurences together and who was in power all this time (from feb 2014 as MS CEO but before that
Now famous xbox "power of the cloud" makes sense finally
Mr
PauloRoberto
Member
Now famous xbox "power of the cloud" makes sense finally
MS was hammening the 'mobile first, cloud first' for years after Nutella was CEO... i saw first hand the results (I was a MS contractor here in Brazil)... PCs were being changed to notebooks and desks were being removed in favor not shared desks... a employee was required not to work 5 days per week on the ofice to prove that 'mobile first, cloud first' worked, since, on purpose, MS would not have enough desks/monitors to share....
SneakersSO
Member
I don't think thats what The Verge is suggesting, that exclusives are back on the table. But just speaking from publicly available information, lets play out that scenario.
In order to put exclusives back on the table, you need to spin up the current generation of machine (Series S|X), and start pumping supply into the market now. You then need to revamp your entire approach to what the next machine is, seeing as how that was basically a W11 machine powered by the FSE, and also get that machine to some sort of approachable price point, which is absolutely not what it was going to be.
A change in direction in this regard would basically cut off billions of dollars of revenue that are set to come in from the other platforms, cost billions to both spin-up more production lines on the current Series machines and redesign the direction of the next machine, which they aren't doing at all, and then start reigning in budgets on games in production, games which aren't even going to be generationally exclusive (meaning they were gonna launch as PS5/6, Xbox Series, Switch 2, Steam, etc.), not even exclusive within its own ecosystem.
Microsoft is a lot of things, but they are not in the business of burning potentially 10s of billions of dollars right now to try and recapture a business strategy that has already handily failed them.
Its absolutely a propaganda piece in some regards, as folks at MS are speaking off-the-record, but the real thing that I would call attention to is that, if what is happening now is this massive about face, does that also extend to what Bond and Spencer and Co's vision for what their next machine would be and their strategy for extending the Xbox ecosystem currently is? Cause as far as everyone is aware, they are still heading in this direction, so if the only correction is 'We won't run the 'this is an Xbox' ad campaign anymore', then they are still heading in the same direction they always were.
Moreover, blaming anything on Sarah Bond just fully ignores the reality of the business leadership - Sarah Bond came aboard in 2023, and even with that, she was the number 2 person, not number 1. Yes, the 'This is an Xbox' campaign was Sarah's brain-child. Guess who approved it? Wasn't Nadella - Spencer did. Everything she chose or did happened under his watch. Spencer has been helming Xbox since before he took up the mantle fully, so for folks looking for someone to blame, despite the fact that Xbox has been circling the drain since 2013, entirely under his purview, but oh - NOW its only on Bond, it only really fell apart after 2023? Come on. Thats just nonsense.
My impression from everyone I have ever spoken or worked with from that camp has told me that, as long as Spencer was there, then Xbox, or at least what we think of Xbox, would continue to exist. If Spencer was ever out, thats because whatever Xbox is would become something else entirely. Everything i've heard since Friday backs up that assertion even further.
Topher
Identifies as young
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A friend of mine have an store of card games like Magic and specially Pokémon. I don't care about it at all but my nephews love it more because of the images, they don't care about learning to play.Jez straight in defending his bean Queen
One day I went there to buy some Pokémon cards for them, there was some kind of championship, whatever. I shit you not that half the dudes there looked like him. The place smelled like someone died there last week and they didn't care. I decided to go on a week day next.
PauloRoberto
Member
I would say that is more related to Open AI losing its 'edge'... but since Co Pilot is even worse and Asha is part of this sh*t... you are right :-DDoesn't look like Wall Street is impressed with Asha
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Sorcerer
Member
It's not like Xbox was not failing before Sarah's tenure at the top. I'm sure she had to make a drastic decision and that drastic decision was to not focus on the hardware. In her situation I don't see what else could have been done without the proper support and time. She simply struck out in another direction hoping to course correct "The Phil Years". But I think even she saw the writing on the wall as it was happening.
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Humdinger
Member
Good to hear. That part wasn't making sense to me. It would be too costly.
Appreciate your input, as always.
Well said.
Matt Booty got a promotion to Chief Content Officer much like Phil did from head of studios to CEO before.
ReBurn
Gold Member
I wouldSure blame it all on Sarah
ReBurn
Gold Member
You don't get your face put on a cookie by accepting responsibility for the bad parts.