Phil Spencer Says Customers Were Confused by Xbox One Specs and Features
posted Sunday Oct 26, 2014 by Nicholas DiMeo
We've talked at length about the Xbox One and Microsoft's decision to be indecisive on the path of the console. The good news is that it's finally all coming together, albeit in a slightly altered path than the original. And even though its competition is copying ideas that gamers said they didn't want but somehow are now miraculously loving (and are paying for), there hasn't been a major vision shift for over six months, so I think we've hit our stride. Microsoft's Head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, has guided the ship for a while now but sat down with IGN's Podcast Unlocked to talk about some of the confusion and frustration consumers felt after the initial launch of the Xbox One.
Right off the bat, Spencer acknowledged where Microsoft missed its mark in delivering the proper message to its customers. Not properly explaining the Kinect requirement, or that the console would be forced to check-in online upset a lot of people and with social media allowing the ill-informed or unaware to voice an opinion on a subject, the backlash hit them hard.
"The year of the announce of Xbox, E3 2013, the toll it took on some of the internal team members was probably higher than I anticipated or many of us did," Spencer said. He compared it to E3 2014, where his team was "visibly emotional" in trying to bring back pride and a positive reputation to something they'd worked hard on. On his part in the decision-making and message delivery process, Spencer owned up to his role.
I see it sometimes on Twitter and other places, where people want to call me out as somebody who was at the leadership table when decisions were made for Xbox One, and that's absolutely true. I've never tried to wash my hands or distance myself from my role on the Xbox One leadership team through the announcement of the console, E3 2013 - I was there, and I'm not trying to create some kind of false history that makes me look better, to say I wasn't there, I wasn't involved. I'm going to take responsibility for those decisions, absolutely, good ones and bad ones. I have to, otherwise I don't have any credibility in what I do going forward. I wouldn't trust me if all of a sudden I tried to say 'well, I was asleep during those meetings'. It would be silly. I was there.
Spencer even went on to say that there should've been more time at E3 2013 spent with talking about the amount of games coming to the console, but insisted that the entertainment features are what makes the console a complete option for the living room. He boldly says they have the right to do that because they make an outstanding product.
I think we get permission as a platform to focus on entertainment when we're a great gaming platform. And before we've earned that permission, and we go out and try to explain to people that we're an entertainment platform, without checking for all the Xbox fans out there that this is going to be the place they want to play games - I think that's where we confused people.
Still, Spencer confidently stood behind the decisions the team has made from that point moving forward, and believes that the best companies can learn from mistakes, no matter the type. Are you sold on the Xbox One yet? Why or why not? Let us know in the comments below.
