Xbox Series Hex: Why Won’t Xbox’s Big Game Problem Go Away?

ign.com:

Phil Spencer has accomplished a lot of great things during his nine-plus years as Head of Xbox. Under his leadership, Xbox has made incredible strides in:

Unfortunately, though, Spencer has one notable black mark on his legacy: exclusive blockbuster games. Xbox has continually disappointed over the past decade in this most important area of all. It’s not that Xbox hasn’t had anything – it isn’t a zero-sum game, after all – but this generation was supposed to be a fresh start for Microsoft; a chance to win back the Xbox 360 customers it lost to Sony and the PS4. And so much of the groundwork had already been laid: the purchasing of many new first-party studios, the gamer-first Smart Delivery feature, and the aforementioned backwards compatibility and Xbox Game Pass initiatives.

Is this Spencer’s fault? That’s difficult to say, but I’d lean towards no, because the fact of the matter is that while video games, like sports, are part of a multi-billion-dollar entertainment industry, winning and losing in the video game business isn’t as plainly black and white as it is in sports. If your favorite team loses year after year, you trade players, sign new ones, and eventually fire the head coach/manager and/or the general manager. You can’t apply that same binary logic to Spencer, Xbox Game Studios boss Matt Booty, or anyone else in the world of games. Success is measured in a million different ways – many of which the public isn’t privy to. But it’s still fair to look to leadership and look at their track record as well as what those around them say about them.

Anecdotally, anyone I’ve ever talked to about Phil Spencer has expressed nothing but praise and admiration. So if he’s not the problem, what is? Is he surrounded by “yes