Phil Spencer Retiring After 38 Years At Microsoft (ign.com)
(Friday February 20, 2026 @05:40PM (BeauHD)
from the end-of-an-era dept.)
- Reference: 0180833258
- News link: https://games.slashdot.org/story/26/02/20/2125252/phil-spencer-retiring-after-38-years-at-microsoft
- Source link: https://www.ign.com/articles/phil-spencer-retiring-sarah-bond-out-matt-booty-promoted-as-microsoft-ai-exec-asha-sharma-named-new-xbox-boss-exclusive
Xbox chief and Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer is [1]leaving Microsoft after nearly 40 years at the company . "Meanwhile, Xbox President Sarah Bond, "long thought by many both inside and outside of Microsoft to be Spencer's heir apparent, has resigned," reports IGN. From the report:
> The new CEO of Microsoft Gaming will be Asha Sharma, currently the President of Microsoft's CoreAI product. Finally, Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty is being promoted to Chief Content Officer and will work closely with Sharma. "I want to thank Phil for his extraordinary leadership and partnership," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in an email sent to Microsoft staff. "Over 38 years at Microsoft, including 12 years leading Gaming, Phil helped transform what we do and how we do it." [...]
>
> Spencer was named Head of Xbox in March of 2014, when he was tasked with righting a ship that had made a number of product choices and policy decisions that rubbed core gamers the wrong way in the run-up to the launch of the Xbox One in Fall 2013. Long hailed by gamers as being one of their own, Spencer could frequently be found on Xbox Live, playing games regularly with fellow Xbox gamers and racking up a healthy Gamerscore. His first major move when put in charge was [2]decoupling the Kinect 2.0 peripheral from the Xbox One package, thus immediately reducing the new console's price by $100 to $399, matching the day-one price of Sony's PlayStation 4. He spearheaded the [3]much-heralded backwards compatibility movement within Xbox, the Xbox Game Pass service was [4]born under his watch , and accessibility made major advances during his tenure in both hardware and software. Xbox Play Anywhere, which sought to let gamers play their Xbox games on any device, be it a PC, console, or handheld, isn't new but has been a big recent focal point.
>
> Spencer's time running Xbox will perhaps be most remembered for [5]Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition of Activision-Blizzard-King in 2022, which took almost two years to achieve regulatory approval from various agencies around the world. But Spencer began trying to solve for Xbox's dearth of first-party games in 2018, when the first wave of studio acquisitions occurred. Prior to the Activision deal, Spencer's biggest move came with the [6]$7.5 billion acquisition of ZeniMax , parent company of Bethesda, in 2020. The deal gave Xbox total ownership of Bethesda Game Studios and its Fallout and Elder Scrolls franchises along with id Software and its Doom and Quake IPs, among many others. Questions arose from there about whether or not that meant all of Xbox's new studios would produce games exclusively for Xbox consoles, and while some games were kept off of PlayStation platforms temporarily, many weren't and most now seem to come to PS5 eventually, if not on day one.
[1] https://www.ign.com/articles/phil-spencer-retiring-sarah-bond-out-matt-booty-promoted-as-microsoft-ai-exec-asha-sharma-named-new-xbox-boss-exclusive
[2] https://games.slashdot.org/story/14/06/05/1526240/microsoft-confirms-disconnecting-kinect-gives-devs-10-more-gpu-horsepower
[3] https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/17/10/23/229212/why-xbox-one-backward-compatibility-took-so-long
[4] https://games.slashdot.org/story/20/04/30/1929203/microsofts-big-xbox-game-pass-bet-is-starting-to-pay-off
[5] https://games.slashdot.org/story/22/01/18/1342220/microsoft-to-buy-activision-blizzard-in-69-billion-video-game-mega-deal
[6] https://games.slashdot.org/story/21/03/08/2134206/eu-approves-microsofts-75-billion-bethesda-acquisition
> The new CEO of Microsoft Gaming will be Asha Sharma, currently the President of Microsoft's CoreAI product. Finally, Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty is being promoted to Chief Content Officer and will work closely with Sharma. "I want to thank Phil for his extraordinary leadership and partnership," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in an email sent to Microsoft staff. "Over 38 years at Microsoft, including 12 years leading Gaming, Phil helped transform what we do and how we do it." [...]
>
> Spencer was named Head of Xbox in March of 2014, when he was tasked with righting a ship that had made a number of product choices and policy decisions that rubbed core gamers the wrong way in the run-up to the launch of the Xbox One in Fall 2013. Long hailed by gamers as being one of their own, Spencer could frequently be found on Xbox Live, playing games regularly with fellow Xbox gamers and racking up a healthy Gamerscore. His first major move when put in charge was [2]decoupling the Kinect 2.0 peripheral from the Xbox One package, thus immediately reducing the new console's price by $100 to $399, matching the day-one price of Sony's PlayStation 4. He spearheaded the [3]much-heralded backwards compatibility movement within Xbox, the Xbox Game Pass service was [4]born under his watch , and accessibility made major advances during his tenure in both hardware and software. Xbox Play Anywhere, which sought to let gamers play their Xbox games on any device, be it a PC, console, or handheld, isn't new but has been a big recent focal point.
>
> Spencer's time running Xbox will perhaps be most remembered for [5]Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition of Activision-Blizzard-King in 2022, which took almost two years to achieve regulatory approval from various agencies around the world. But Spencer began trying to solve for Xbox's dearth of first-party games in 2018, when the first wave of studio acquisitions occurred. Prior to the Activision deal, Spencer's biggest move came with the [6]$7.5 billion acquisition of ZeniMax , parent company of Bethesda, in 2020. The deal gave Xbox total ownership of Bethesda Game Studios and its Fallout and Elder Scrolls franchises along with id Software and its Doom and Quake IPs, among many others. Questions arose from there about whether or not that meant all of Xbox's new studios would produce games exclusively for Xbox consoles, and while some games were kept off of PlayStation platforms temporarily, many weren't and most now seem to come to PS5 eventually, if not on day one.
[1] https://www.ign.com/articles/phil-spencer-retiring-sarah-bond-out-matt-booty-promoted-as-microsoft-ai-exec-asha-sharma-named-new-xbox-boss-exclusive
[2] https://games.slashdot.org/story/14/06/05/1526240/microsoft-confirms-disconnecting-kinect-gives-devs-10-more-gpu-horsepower
[3] https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/17/10/23/229212/why-xbox-one-backward-compatibility-took-so-long
[4] https://games.slashdot.org/story/20/04/30/1929203/microsofts-big-xbox-game-pass-bet-is-starting-to-pay-off
[5] https://games.slashdot.org/story/22/01/18/1342220/microsoft-to-buy-activision-blizzard-in-69-billion-video-game-mega-deal
[6] https://games.slashdot.org/story/21/03/08/2134206/eu-approves-microsofts-75-billion-bethesda-acquisition
Well, no surprise since Xbox is over (Score:2)
by ffkom ( 3519199 )
After Microslop surrendered in the "Console War" unconditionally to Sony, and with "Xbox" now merely being a marketing shell name that Microslop wants 3rd-parties to pay a fee for sticking it onto all kinds of PC hardware, it is no wonder that "Mr. Xbox" has no future at the company. I guess it will only be a matter of time until Microslop also sells off the game studios they bought for so much money and for so little reason.
MongoDB CRAP (Score:4, Insightful)
by fuzzyf ( 1129635 )
WHY is the MongoDB ad impossible to get rid of?
FFS Slashdot, I get that you need money but don't force ads that takes up 10% of your screen with an X that doesn't even work.
As far as I care, Xbox is over. (Score:2)
In my stupid and insignificant opinion, Xbox hasn't been a relevant gaming platform since the days of the Xbox 360.
And now that Phil Spencer is stepping down and being replaced by M$' AI boss, it would seem the clankers are about to creep in to the ecosystem.
I know Sharma says she's not looking to incorporate "soulless AI slop" into the Xbox ecosystem, but on the other hand, Micro$oft has stated in recent years that they love open-source. In either case, I trust that statement about as much as I'd trust Joh