PS4 versus Xbox One was "the worst generation to lose," Phil Spencer admits

gamesradar.com:

Reflecting on the current state of the brand, Xbox boss Phill Spencer has concluded that the Xbox One and PS4 generation was the "worst generation to lose."

During an interview with Kinda Funny (opens in new tab), Spencer pointed out that great games alone won't pull Xbox out of its third-place position in the console race. "We lost the worst generation to lose in the Xbox One generation, where everybody built their digital library of games," Spencer says. "So when you go and you're building on Xbox, we want our Xbox community to feel awesome, but this idea that if we just focus more on great games on our console, somehow we're gonna win the console race, I think doesn't really [match] the reality of most people."

Spencer adds that "like 90% of the people every year who walk into a big retailer to buy a console, and are already a member of one of the three ecosystems, and their digital library is there. This is the first generation where the big games that they're playing were games that were available last-gen," Spencer says, citing examples like Fortnite, Roblox, and Minecraft

"The continuity from generation to generation is so strong. I see a lot of pundits out there that kind of want to go back to the time where we all had cartridges and discs and every new generation was a clean slate, and you could switch the whole console share. That's just not the world that we are in today. There's no world where Starfield is an 11/10 and people start selling their PS5s. That's not going to happen." 

There's an irony in the fact that Microsoft fell behind in the Xbox One generation as players started to build their digital libraries on other platforms. The initial pitch for Xbox One was an online-focused platform built to push