I really, really like Phil Spencer. He consistently manages to be candid, personable, informative, and tactful, which is no easy task. Most executives are wildly out-of-touch buzzword/cliche machines that may as well be reading straight from a press release, but Spencer is as comfortable shooting the shit with GB as he is in presenting in a boardroom to suits and beancounters. It's rarefied stuff, and I can't help but to be impressed with him every time.
Spencer makes me proud to be an Xbox One owner. A ton of people cling to MS wounds of old and presume some nefarious ploy and/or the worst possible outcome whenever any bit of Xbox news drops (often talking in circles in the process), but as long as Phil is at the helm, I'm confident that the Xbox brand will be just fine. The Xbox One is so much better than it typically gets credit for, and Spencer's willingness to address user feedback is largely the reason why. The guy rules.
Kudos to Jeff and Brad as well. They continue to not throw softballs (while not being dicks about it), and Phil is damn near batting 1.000 in his responses. I thought it came across very well that his strategy is simply to offer gamers a variety of platform options, not a move to some kind of planned obsolescence cell phone model, which was a conclusion many people prematurely (and erroneously) jumped to. As it turns out, they're not fragmenting the userbase at all, they're simply adding to the console space by creating both a smaller and a more powerful model as the market requested.
Spencer did a terrific job clarifying both the One S and Scorpio by detailing what those consoles will and will not do and who they are and are not for. It's weird to hear him basically tell people without 4k TVs not to buy the Scorpio and to come out and say that the One S will not really offer better performance than the Xbox One, and it certainly cost them sales in doing so, but anyone still pushing the "evil/greedy MS" b.s. need look no further than these two statements which go out of the way to be consumer-friendly at the expense of sales. They could have obfuscated and moved some more units, but chose instead to be 100% upfront with everyone.
This interview is a must-watch for Xbox One owners, prospective owners, and non-owners alike. Great stuff all-around.
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