Phil Spencer Wants Xbox to Win Based on Hardware Capabilities - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 25 January 2025 / 5,091 Views
Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil in an interview with Gamertag Radio discussed the future of Xbox hardware, while Microsoft releases more of its games on other platforms like the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation.
"I want people to pick hardware based on the capabilities of that hardware and how that fits into the choices that they want to make about where they want to play, and we want our hardware to win based on the hardware capabilities that we have," said Spencer (via VideoGamesChronicle).
"I think the difference that we’ve seen in the last 20 years, and I think this is good because I come from building games, is it’s really games first, not platform first. Most of the games that you or I will talk about run across so many different platforms, and those are the games that are having success, those are the games at the top of the charts…
"I want to build a platform that services those creators, the creators that are trying to meet people on every screen."
He added, "Let’s say it: our own hardware, I think it’s fundamental about what Xbox is. It's not lost to me that ‘box’ is in the name of our brand. In the position that I’m in, I look at hardware as a critical part of what we do, but [we’re] not trying to gatekeep the games off of other places for the benefit of it.
"Let’s go build innovative hardware that people want to use to play, whether that’s in their hands, whether it’s on the television, or even other places,” he added.
"And I love our hardware team. I spent some time with them just this week [looking at] the roadmap that they have. I think we’re learning a lot from this. Like Steam Deck, and what does it mean for our games to be there? ROG Ally, Lenovo… what does Xbox mean on those platforms? I don’t think we’re tuned it perfectly yet, and I’ve spent a lot of time with the team on that, but I want to make progress there."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Bluesky.
More Articles
Literally selling my Series X and all my games on it. The value of hardware comes in the games that are on the system for me. There is a big fat zero point into owning an Xbox when I have a PS5 and will get a Switch 2 and you commit to putting all your games on those systems.
Just ask him about the Xbox hardware sales and declines, is it so hard ? Let us see his reaction, answer, and take on the matter.
Usually there are questions that are deemed "off-limits", and they're told beforehand. You either agree to them, or you don't get the interview. Other times, the people doing the interviews don't want to upset or offend in the hopes of currying favor in the future. Either way, it's unfortunate.
In other words; the interview is staged
I mean and what would be the purpose on that exactly? Some of you want those questions to be asked to have some sort of "gotcha" moment for some reason?
Why would be the point of it. Everybody knows that Xbox hardware is not doing well...
My personal take and wish would be Phil to say that they gave big plans going forward for the XBOX hardware, that they will start to do everything they can so they can sell whatever possible and put some announcements even if it have to. OMG moment like on the E3s in the 7th gen era.
Of coure :) Well, you never know we may be surprised by the next gen; we will see :)
But for sure; the Xbox hardware sales for current gen are looking really bad!
Sony was in a similar position sales wise with the PS3 back in 2007 and 2008. But they successfully turned the things around.
Xbox is not in the same boat though, the marketshare is quite different. It is impossible for them to turn this around I think
Sony was never in a similar position. And they turned things around by bucking down and making games. Sony was stumbling. Xbox is getting curb stomped.
True. PS3 never got a losing position of +3:1 against X360. PS3 suffered alot, but nothing close to the bloodbath that current Xbox X/S is facing.
yes, that's why I said similar. They had a hard time with it, but Sony didn't let the PS3 get as bad as XBSX or even XB1 in terms of sales, since they act quick and turn the things around. They didn't let PS3 get 3:1 against XB360.
What would it accomplish besides stirring the pot?
I don't know who is the guy in the left of the thumbnail but the gentleman in the middle is one of Spencer official fanboys, so no, that's not going to happen.
How is Parris a fanboy? Give some examples. I've only listened to him a handful of times, but certainly doesn't give off fanboy vibes and plays on all the consoles and PC.
You can look and rewatch the infamous interview he had after the vampire multiplayer game disaster. The dude was putting more excuses than Spencer, when it wasn't necessary. That + tweets where he talks passionately about Spencer like he was archiving groundbreaking stuff when those achievements can be summarized like "MS has a lot of money" lol. Not all fanboys are toxic and get into fights with random people, you just need to put something in a pedestal to be a fanboy.
Talking about toxicity, playing on everything doesn't mean anything. Some of the most nasty bs I have seen on the internet comes from people like that lol.
Before MS went multiplat he said you don’t spend billions and not make game exclusives. Then after MS changed he started saying the industry has changed and pretending it was an industry wide issue.
You understand both of those statements can be true? The industry is steering further away from exclusives slowly but surely.
Did Phil lose weight?
All those years and still not able to grasp that games are what make a console successful...
They keep saying they care about hardware but their action dont reflect that. I get they want focus on gamepass and sell more games on PS5, Switch but where is marketing to promote Xbox console, why there is no discount for holidays. More Xbox sold means more people subscribed to gamepass.
I used to love consoles and I have all of the current gen ones, but I might just resort to Switch 2 + PC (+ maybe a quest 4 or 5) in the next generation. I want to have reasons to buy a Playstation and a Xbox, but if everything will be released everywhere (sooner or later) and prices for consoles hike and physical media becomes less and less of a thing, then I really struggle to see the point. Sony has a bit more of a pull because they regularly secure exclusives and their games often take about 2 years to arrive on PC, but I barely buy games day 1 anyways, so that alone isn't a strong reason for me.
Phill is going to retire this year. He is obviously not happy with the direction XBOX is going, but his boss is calling the shots. He's just playing PR manager spinning to try to make sense of it in the public opinion, while not believing in it himself. He'll get fed up seeing XBOX brand being destroyed from within and leave. My two cents.
"Like Steam Deck, and what does it mean for our games to be there? ROG Ally, Lenovo… what does Xbox mean on those platforms?" That your limiting your scope and design, around weaker hardware? And that might mean, you never make full use of your newest hardware?
Aren't you all tired of coming up with that?
Games are out on PC and support a wild range of hardware and runs WAY better on high end PC than Play Station 5 / Xbox Series X and can still run on way weaker hardware for most of them... So what is your point exactly? And the best looking games out there are definitely not going to be on console (at least not with their graphics settings) but on PC with tone of settings you can adjust based on your hardware... So how is that "limiting" them exactly?
And how do you know, that if a game was designed around only being able to run on PC's with 64 GB of ram, and a 3D cache AMD cpu, and a Nvidia 4090.... that they wouldn't be mind blowingly better than games designed to run on everything ? That is the limit of pc games designed to run on potatoes.... It means they can't shine to the degree possible, if they were not made in that way.
Well, that's the point you do not know... But we know the opposite is true.
I mean, you can come up with speculations if you want but the reality is that games looks amazing with high settings and can still run with low settings.
And games running "only" on Play Station 5 (I'm using this as Xbox as less console exlusives); are not looking better than the best looking games on PC... And when you take those games (the ones Sony publishes on PC) they look usually (unless the port is bad) better on PC... Hell, even things that Sony claimed that Ratchet And Clank on Play Station 5 was ONLY possible because of Play Station 5 SSD speed... The game runs on mid-range PC without any problem...
So even if we go ahead and speculate that what you are sayign would be true; the reality is that anything can be done with scalability in mind. And adding settings/options works like a charm even for those mind blowing games. No exclusive games (no games at all); ever proved that being specifically designed for a specific hardware will make it better (at least on graphical aspect); of course for stuff that are very specifically using some hardware feature (but not just a gimick right) like 3D games, or stuff like that, yes, you cannot have those games on other hardware. But that's different. And at the end; lets be real, we are talking about graphics here... (and possible AI stuff); nothing else...
You can speculate as much as you want; but at the end; this is what it is today... I'm still waiting to see anything on the exclusive parts that cannot be done on PC with high settings.
Its not "cannot be done on pc", its the trade off.... my point was, you limit yourself, and game design, and likely also slightly in the visual department, when making scaleable up and down. Compaired to just makeing it fit for 1 system. Also PC can overcome alot by simply brute forceing it. A console cannot, because of the specs of it, or the price it would have, if you attempted to make a console like a highend pc.
Well, I simply disagree with that. Settings and options is a thing and I do not consider this a limit at all (unless the developper is not doing it right).
At the end; the only thing that matter are graphics, let's face it. And for that; scaling up or down is possible and there is no need to trade off (unless you use engine that are themselves limited).
Let's just agree to disagree :)
I made this same argument when the Playstation 5 was unveiled and everyone thought the SSD was the second coming of Christ that would put the PS5 ahead of everything else. - To be fair, those same people thought the same about Cell and GDDR5 memory.
Not only did that not eventuate... But the argument I put forth at the time is still as relevant back then as it is today.
That is... The PC is a memory rich environment, it's not limited to a paltry 16GB of total memory shared between all devices.
You can just reserve some extra Ram for "caching" of assets to make up for the slower SSD for something like Ratchet and Clank.
It's really that simple... But something people couldn't comprehend.
SSD's are far slower than Ram in the end... And SSD's are not a replacement for Ram.
They have their place and definitely make texture and mesh streaming far better, but nothing more Ram couldn't have solved either.
Case in point..... Cross gen titles, often don't look as great as true next gen only titles. There... proof that your limited if you design for lower spec systems.
I think it is because they are developped with aging engines. I mean, I agree with you (for some games at least) but this is mostly because of the engine most of the time. When you get newwer engine (Unreal 5 for instance) then; they can also scale down but they add a lot of new features taking advantage of those new hardwares.
what happens then when only next gen titles on consoles that are also on pc can be scaled down to potato hardware?. trust me if you know how engines work you will know they are very very much capable of scaling up and down.
The devs can make it look as next gen as they want on higher hardware and shitty as they want on lower. But its all about cost. The is nothing stopping a dev from making a game exclusive to 5090 cards and top end cpus with 64gb ram etc. But whats the cost and how many people can buy it?.
That's literally what they're not going for,
Maybe they're going for software sales
wow! id rather win on software, thats where they make money. don they lose money every system they sell?
As the company in charge of eShops and such, it certainly pays very well to produce a decently successful system. Sell hardware at a net gain, and it’s an absolute win, no? (Otherwise, why even bother making hardware in the first place?)
Xbox sold less than PS2, Xbox One X sold less than PS4 Pro, Series X has sold less than PS5. The more capable machine has failed Xbox so far.
A console more capable than PS6 by an obvious degree will have to be an enthusiast console that sells less than any Xbox to date and focuses on profits and revenue of the audience that buys it, not reaching a wide audience.
I think we put to much value in "sales" and what it means to be successful.
You don't need the best selling hardware to be successful, you just need to be profitable.
The Xbox 360 and Xbox One by extension were "successful" as both platforms were profitable with 60~ million or more hardware units shifted.
Likewise with the PSP, despite not beating the DS, it's hard to deny that 80+ million units was not a success.
Absolutely no respect for MS/Xbox. So many bad decisions over the years and they’ve done little to make gaming better. The Xbox One terrible launch, passing on the chance to make a Marvel game, Cancelling games that gamers were hyped for while putting out many terrible games, the Gamepass model that trained gamers to “not” buy games, and the weak S which not only held back the X but this whole gaming generation. Plus buying up huge developers while being terrible at managing their own studios. They may as well skip on making another console and just go full in on being a 3rd Party Dev.
Games are way more important than the hardware. I don’t see why MS is even bothering with another console. Should just rip the bandage off and go full multi-platform developer. Why keep wasting money???
make pc games playabale on next gen xbox, that's the easy winning play.
That's how gaming should be..no exclusives and all hardware based.. that's the way the industry heading anyways..
I see him more fit and less fat. That's good news.
Phil, we need a new console for 2026. Series is great but is over.
its a very rapid weight loss.... and by not a small amount. If you lose like 100 lbs in 6 months... You start to question if its a sickness like cancer tbh, because often thats when you see these rapid weight loss. Maybe its just ozempic and him working out at the same time or something.... but its drastic, and happen in less than half a year.
Look, I lost 20+ kilos (like 45+ pounds) few years ago, in just 2 months, walking a lot everyday (not even running, I started to run after that) and just eating less and controling very well what I was eating.
I wasn't technically "FAT" for my height (although, dangerously near). So, you can loss a lot of fat If you want and have some time. And of course, now people get Ozempic as crazy (it is not very recommendable to use that kind of crap, but... ok).
So, do not speculate about those kinds of things, i see him well.
Supposedly 1lb is about 3500 calories.... to lose 20kg (45lbs), in 2 months, you need cut like 158,000 calories, over 2months. Thats like 2700 calories pr day.... for 2months straight.
Thats more than most grown males need/use in a day. So just not eat anything for 2months at all, would not be enough to lose that much weight (and how many people can just stop eatting for 2 months?). You would need light exercise ontop of fasting for like 2months... to make that. Or some heavy training for long hours everyday, while trying not to eat much.
Anyways my hats off to you, if you pulled off a stun like that.
Thats alot of weight loss really quick.
I did NOT heavy training those 2 months, you joke? (and I would NOT had physical force to do that, not at all XD). Heavy training makes me hungry and I need to eat more when I do heavy training, the idea was to eat the less possible, doing easy excercise ("easy"..., because it was just walk... but walking can be -very- hard depending the routes you do. And the hot weather also can count a lot).
I repeat, I restricted VERY much what I ate, and I'm NO joking with this.
I ate, obviously, but only VERY NON fatty things, and the less I could.
I restricted very much everything it was "fat" or had "fat" (including non-cooked olive oil... basically for salats), at the minimum expression.
NOTHING FRIED. And of course, NOT A SINGLE fast-food, any kind of sweets... (including any kind of sodas, ANY, not even Zeros), any "bottle juices", any, "energy drinks", any alcoholic drink, ice-creams... NOTHING, NOTHING AT ALL, not even in a joke). I really suspect eating a single fast-food could have been a total disaster for what i did. I was totally strict, like if I had to die if I didn't.
After some first days of losing easy weight, cause you lose a lot of body-water, i started to burn fat. First not that much, but as I mantained the plan strictly, after some 3...4 weeks, my body was burning fat as a real champion, and by the way, the hungry was hard, but the sensation was great.
In some suppers, I only decided to eat an apple, and NOT a big one, the most little one i could find (and i remember to ate them all, including the cores, telling myself that was "an extra", in exchange for not eating anymore XD): that was all. And that situation ended to be very common. I felt hungry as hell the first days, but eventually, you just get used to it: You feel you are using the inputs of energy you got... A LOT BETTER you normally do. You really feel that.
But yeah, it was a veeeery hard 2 months, but I was full self-motivated. I also remember to starting drink coffe, cause I felt it helped me to burn fat when I was quiet (don't know if this is based in absolutely nothing, so, keep in mind it maybe was just a mental trick. You just do a lot of mental tricks when you are hungry).
The results were astounding, but I felt capable to do it and I was really motivated, and I did it. But I only recommend to do something as this below 40 years old. Maybe even below 35 for some people. It was HARD AS HELL, but possible, and in the end, when I was slim (really slim), It felt amazing. But if you are older than that... maybe is NOT a good idea to try that... the way I did. Because... man, maybe your heart will suffer, I don't know. It depends on your history and your own body. And BTW, I literally solved some migraines problem I had, from time to time, since my teen years: Didn't return again.
With the pandemic, though, I regained some weight. Oh, well...
I did this and lost 20lbs in 2 weeks and then more but I was already slim at that point so I had little fat to lose. I did it for health reasons. I recommend for weight loss but not for too long. I did it for 6 months and ended up tearing my achilles heel, I might have undernourished myself. Anyhow it's possible just with avoiding fats and refined foods to lose weight fast.
Just a doubt: 20lbs in 2 weeks, from the start? I lost that kind of weight also, but it took some days/weeks to get at that point. When you get to it... you lose weight very fast, Anyways, impressive.
And yes, when you get slim as hell... you have to stop, or it will do real damage to your body. When fat is over, and you continue that, you VERY EASILY could end to get undernourishment related problems in all your body. This is no joke.
And is hard to end, cause you don't want to regain weight after that suffering. But you have. Have to start eat a little more.
Also, some exercise then, will mark muscles very easy.
I can think of some technological improvements, that could be game changing for consoles.
3D Cache on the CPU, and RX 9000 gpu cores and its drastically better raytracing and AI ability (for stuff like FSR4). GDDR7 for memory speeds... However, would you be okay with a 1000$ console?
This is the way to move forward.
Have these companies fight for better hardware innovations rather then who money hats software first.
With the amount of money MS has compared to Sony. The 360, Xbone, and XBSX shouldn't have even been close to Sony's consoles in terms of power. I've always been very surprised MS didn't leverage their money to blow Sony out of the water in console hardware power. It seems now that they finally understand that this could actually be their biggest advantage moving forward but, the problem is that it is way too late for it now. Way too little, way too late
They kinda did.... the series X is supposedly a good bit more expensive than the PS5 to make, yet its sold at the same price as the PS5. Like if Sony is losing 50$ on each PS5, and Xbox is losing maybe like 150$ on each sold... that basically what your saying. In this situation they spend 100$ more on each unit to compete.... and it hasn't done anything for them.
XBSX is still too close to PS5 in power terms though. They need to make a console that has high end PC power and make the competition look like a low end PC. Yes it would be massively expensive but it's MS. They did spend 100 billion on acquisitions.
Essay Pro