Phil Spencer is retiring on Monday, and Xbox President Sarah Bond, long thought to be Spencer's heir apparent, has resigned.

Who will run the XBox then?
The head of Microsoft AI!

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The new head of XBox got her first ever achievement only mid-January. And a month later she played 28 games and got 10860 Game Scores.

She failed in Cities: Skylines, completed Firewatch (and praised it), got fairly deep into Halo games (many of them), but also didn't like Minecraft.

She also liked What Remains of Edith Finch, Townscaper, Gone Home, A Short Hike, and BALL x PIT. The overall picture doesn't scream "we hired three gamers to boost the score", but rather "we gave a non-gamer task to play or get fired, she's in pain now, trying to consume 70 years of game industry in one month".

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Among other things, Microsoft will give up on "This is an XBox" marketing from now on. The slogan and overall idea was not popular internally and led to barely (if any) traction in subscription sales (according to Tom Warren from The Verge)

Tom says, that Microsoft decided to fire Sarah Bond, because the campaign was her vision of XBox and she left no space for doubt of this idea back in 2024. Most of the developers and gamers considered this idea offensive and didn't like cloud gaming.

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#Microsoft@GameDEV

It's possible

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#Microsoft@GameDEV

People with the mobile Xbox app started to receive test popups because that's how their new provider works. LOL 😆

PS. That was AI marketing tool by the way...

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#Microsoft@GameDEV

Laura reveals she was kicked out after an unnamed executive handed her a bathrobe to put on at GDC 2004. She refused, left immediately, and was reorganized out of her role the following week. Even with the support of several colleagues, the HR team gave up on her.

Phil Spencer then stepped in, bringing her onto his team where she contributed to titles like Gears of War.

Phil is generally praised by everyone who speaks of him as a colleague and boss.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKUq3zDa0wc
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Bloomberg says that PlayStation is turning away from PC for the next few years to improve their own brand. They are concerned by poor sales of a few recent ports, they no longer want deals with Microsoft, and so on.

Multiplayer and Live Service games will be available on PC, but the story-driven paid games will stay exclusives.

The biggest change happened when PlayStation forced people to use PSN accounts on PC. It was their plan to move people from PC to PS5, but it backfired. Even when restrictions were lifted sales never returned.

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The new Xbox in one image
(Not showing the Xbox)

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#Hardware@GameDEV

That's cake

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#WTF@GameDEV