So I stumbled upon a video of Phil Spencer, head of Xbox, talking about the future of the Xbox One, and how it views its competition with its competitors. If you want to see the video for yourself instead of reading what I have to talk about it, I'll have a link for it down below (Not sure if we're allowed to post Youtube videos in the article section). I'll include a lot of the key quotes in here, so you'll be able to get a nice feel for what he talks about.


Alright, so the videos got a lot of stuff they talk about, but I want to focus on the meat and potatoes of the story. Let's jump into the competition aspect first. Head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, spoke about the competition of this console generation. He admits that the Xbox One might not be able to beat PlayStation 4 in sales. He says he and his team will remain focused on building their customer fan base. During the video, he is talking to Todd Bishop who is the Co-Founder of GeekWire. Truth be told, I had no idea who GeekWire was until I stumbled upon the video, but I digress.

"You were skewered by some of your most loyal customers," Bishop said. "They came after you for limiting the ability to play used games... for the always online features." He goes on further to say "This was the environment that you came into as you came into being head of Xbox; Have you recovered from those missteps, and what have you learned." It seemed to take Phil Spencer a little bit to get a feel for what he wanted to say next, but he did end up talking about it.

"Sony's having incredible success with PlayStation 4, and they have earned that," Spencer said. "But for me as a leader of my team and as someone who is interacting with the Xbox community, I can have more impact focusing on the product now. ... You will hear me talk a lot less about the competition. And people will say, 'Well you're losing, so of course you're not going to bring that up.'" He follows up a little later with: "It is really about the product that we have, the features that we add and how we treat the customers of our Xbox. Share is important, but more than share is are we gaining new customers, are they happy, are they buying games, are they using Xbox Live, are they engaged in the service."

Then, Bishop insists on asking if Phil Spencer can beat Sony this console generation. You can tell that Bishop is basically prying the response, and Spencer does finally respond. Spencer replies with "I don't know, they have a huge lead, and they have a good product."

Taking a quick break from what was said, and inserting my view on this is: It's really not Phil Spencer's fault that he's in this position. He inherited the mess, and he's actually a really good guy. He speaks like a gamer, and I'm sure if he had control of when the Xbox One was being marketed and planned - he wouldn't have made the uber costly mistakes that were made. It's no secret gamers don't like having to keep the kinect in just to play there game that doesn't require it, or to have internet access at all times when internet just isn't readily available like that, or making it so trading games would become impossible. He knows these things were all stupid, and he isn't afraid to admit it. I might be a Sony fan, but you have to respect him. Back to about the video and what Phil Spencer has to say.

"It's easy to read the blogs and the sites and my twitter feed and see what people, the customers, think of our brand and our product, but the team in Redmond took as much of a hit as the external community did around our launch, and I sit back and I think about an organization of thousands of people. You're down in the organization and some words and some actions from some executives just trash all the work that you have done over the last three years. Many weekends and nights. And you start to question, well why am I doing this? Why am I working so hard, when a few comments can actually position our product more directly than any work that the team has done." He goes on to say, "I'm talking about our own words and things that we said. Regaining the team was job number one when I started, and being very forthright with them about where we were and our ability to do things like beat Sony was critical."

He also goes on to talk about the backwards compatibility, which was announced earlier this year at E3. He mentions that he is actually excited about the future. He really feels that progress is being made. Like I said, I've always been a Sony fan, but you must respect a man who is willing to put the hard work in for something he believes in. Here's one final quote, for the rest of what's shown, make sure to watch the video.

"Every time I sit down and do a product review, the team comes in with surprise and delight around the momentum that they have more than I'm able to have. And when I see that transformation of a team that's questioning the leadership of the organization to a team that is motivated by the customers that we have and their ability to delight them. I see a team that is making amazing progress."

So guys, it's nice to get a glimpse of what's going on inside Phil Spencers mind. He's a good guy and a rough spot, and I hope he can take the Xbox One and make it super successful! He can keep dropping the price too, that can make me want to buy one as of right now haha.

If you don't know, Phil Spencer basically was put into his position after all the lovely stuff involving Microsoft happened. Since then, he has spoken many times on many different subjects that have all been things that we want to hear. I recommend googling and finding all the different articles about him, because I'm telling you he's down to Earth and seems to have a game plan.

Anyways, thanks for checking this out! Don't forget to check the video, and don't be afraid to talk about the article and share your thoughts. Thanks for reading, Vizzed!

Youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBPp1F-Utd4
All material and knowledge gained came from the video, so consider it the source!