YouSaid · the spoken record

Phil Spencer

lines on the record: 85
first: 2020-11-24
most recent: 2020-11-24
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Every second, like that you need to be real time with your community as it gets to scale, whether you're an individual developer with one game or a platform. And we as Microsoft and other companies will do the same. We need to give you the tools.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I'm going to ask you one more question because they're going to keep giving me time if I stay on it. So when you think about the opportunities there, how active are they? One of the things every platform company that we talk to, we ask them about content moderation. User-generated content comes with like a known set of challenges. How active do you need to be in moderating and shaping your community versus putting norms around it and hoping it develops the right way?”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“By the accessibility and all of the work that this industry takes on and tries to go tackle. And that's a Sony comment and Nintendo comment, a Steam comment of like an Xbox comment. It's not a competitive thing. It's something for us as an industry. Sorry, I'm a little bit passionate about this one.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That opportunity and trying to realize it. It's part like who are we as teams? It can't be a bunch of old white guys like me that are running all of these teams. And that's the only perspective that shows up in the creative and the business model and the opportunities. You can't just be people from North America, Europe, and Japan that are building games. We need to diversify what voices are being heard through the creative and where those creations happen. We need to really build safety and security. And obviously we have Minecraft, Robloxes on our platform. We think very, very carefully about both the social norms and the safety and security. So if I'm a parent and my kids online that I know that they're as safe as they are upstairs playing in their bedroom and that's a goal for us. So these are real opportunities. I could have said challenges, but I see them as opportunities for us as an industry. And I'm actually motivated.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The discourse that should be able to happen in our social gaming networks, you see work on ML machine learning techniques to detect whether it's bullying or grooming that happens online or people that are social or suicidal stress situations and can we detect these things for the longest time gaming And again, as you've said many times, I've been around for some will say too long. And when it's the adoption of things like AI or simulated 3D technology, gaming has always been at the forefront of adopting these things and making them mass market into consumers' hands. And I think now what we have as an industry is an opportunity on more social and maybe even global issues that we can really lean into. And I love the way that the industry itself and Team Xbox has done its share on seeing.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I love, love this topic. I absolutely think as an industry, it's our responsibility to use both the interactive nature of our medium as well as you say the audience that comes into gaming to help build social norms that are durable across the physical and the digital space and gaming and non-gaming scenarios. Like I think we have that opportunity as an industry. And I actually see us, we get tons of learning and growing and mistakes in our past as a company, as an industry, I say as a company as like as Xbox learning on this every day. But I absolutely see the industry. I'll go to like game developers conference back when we were having it physically. And you see blacks in gaming, Latinos in gaming, LGBTQIA plus in gaming events. You see topics around.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Last question. We've talked a lot about just sort of the business of games. We've talked a lot about how you architect the consoles, how you make them, how you get them to people. This is all in the context of what we started with, which is games are having a moment. It's an inflection point. They're more visible than ever. Certainly, I think that started with Fortnite. We're seeing a Roblox moment. There are concerts happening. This is how people are socializing the pandemic. Games have just been a sideline in the entertainment industry. They were over there for a long time. Now they're just like in the middle of everything. Does that change your responsibility? You talked a lot about the parts of the gamer culture you don't like, but are there parts that you want to enhance that you want to push forward? There's a lot of kids learning there's social interactions in these spaces. Like what's your responsibility? How has it evolved?”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I understand that. I'm just thinking real time, is a 4K television that different? Is HDR in my television that different? Like I get an 4K HDR signal from Disney+ that lights up my local hardware capability in a unique way. It's coming from the cloud, but my local edge device, my TV, to use Microsoft vocabulary, knows how to decode that and actually turn on specific hardware capability locally and make that work. And I don't think that the fact that things are coming from the cloud really keeps us from innovating on local hardware, whether it's input, whether it's display, whether it's audio. You see that with DTSX and a bunch of other things that are hitting now, those streams could easily come from the cloud and light up in interesting ways. It's something to think about, but we don't see it. Blocking us in any way.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Somebody controlling I feel like this comes back to that conversation about what happens in the cloud and what happens on the edge, which is every time I talk to anybody from Microsoft, I feel like I use the words edge in cloud like five times in the conversation. But right, what I'm describing is they've made a user experience improvement at a very local level, right? The thing you're holding in your hand connected to the box, it's all running on the box. A lot of our conversations so far has been about streaming like how do we abstract the platform and put it everywhere. And that level of abstraction usually just comes with a commoditization of user experience. Like it's just sort of necessarily what happens. Yeah.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A strength, it doesn't keep us from innovating, but clearly we do have to think about all of the use cases that are out there. We can't turn the controller inside out because there's so much expectation about the way it should work now. But we can innovate on top of that. And we're going to look at what any other company does and learn from it and see if it's something that we want to apply to what we're doing.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah. You could create as part of the API that we have with direct input or other with Apple and Android, which is where our controller works. We could clearly add API calls for Rumble, which we already do in certain cases or haptic triggers. It's stuff that we've looked at. I think your point earlier around the Xbox controllers kind of become a default even outside of gaming scenarios, always bizarre to me. I'll see some like somebody controlling a robot and they're using an Xbox controller somewhere in like an enterprise scenario. But, you know, that's something where we have to think about superset, subset, not all of our controllers have all exactly the same capability. The elite has the kind of buttons on the back and stuff. So I don't think it precludes us, but there is something about the common just expectation that people have on our controller and its ubiquity that's out there that I think is.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I applaud what they did with the controller, not actually for this, well, I shouldn't say not for the specifics of the controller, but more than just the specifics of the controller. I think for all of us in the industry, we should learn from each other and the innovation that we all push on and whether it's distribution and business model like Game Pass or Controller Tech or the Wii back in the day, which clearly had an impact on us when we went off and did Connect and Sony did the move. I think all of that innovation is something that we should all be looking at and learning and growing and saying, okay, what's really going to break out and become a common part of a platform that developers and players are going to look for? Or what is more kind of vertical around a specific scenario on a specific piece of hardware? And so we're trying to be eyes open on that for any technology, whether it's controller.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or ABC So, it's interesting about this. We've been talking a lot about Game Pass and streaming being on lots of devices. A thing about this console generation in particular is that Sony took a leap forward with the actual controller and they were able to do something because they built haptics into their controller. It's tightly integrated into their system. They have a few titles at launch that really take advantage of it. How are you thinking about that split? There's something I can do if I own the whole stack over here and then there's this massive inflection point and opportunity to be everywhere if I sort of commoditize a little bit more. And I say commoditize and like that's a little bit unfair because every controller in the world looks like the Xbox 360 controller. That design has won. So you could just take that everywhere. But they were able to take another leap with their controller because they control the hardware stack.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A certain game to go build. When the team, if they're just out there pitching to publishers on how do I get this sign as a retail game? And if it doesn't fit into some Excel spreadsheet that tells you what the retail outcome will be, that it doesn't get greenlit. And you see this in things like Netflix. There are clearly shows on Netflix that would have never been greenlit by NBC or CBS or ABC in the old model. And frankly, can have real success.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My hope is we will get there, and maybe not 100%, like maybe some hybrid model, which I think could work. We already have a rev share relationship with most of the content creators because we have a store, a digital store on our Xbox. Which is basically a usage-based thing if you think about it. Like I buy the game, we take a cut, they take a cut, and we build success together. And I'm hoping we can get to a model whereas we see upside, they see upside, there's some downside risk that we can help cover, which gives us certain capability with the content, but also helps them go do some things that maybe they couldn't get greenlit on a pure retail model. And that's the thing that's been heartwarming to me as somebody who's been building games for so long is to see games come to the service that wouldn't have been built if there wasn't this engine called Game Pass that allows us to go off and help fund.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Day and date. So that would be a flat fee payment to a developer. Sometimes the developer's more done with the game and it's more just a transaction of, hey, we'll put it in Game Pass if you'll pay us this amount of money. Others want more based on usage and monetization in whether it's kind of store monetization that gets created through transactions or kind of usage. So we're open in experimenting with many different partners because we don't think we have it figured out. When we started, we had a model that was all based on usage. And most of the partners said, yeah, yeah, we understand that, but we don't believe it. So just give us the money up front.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, our deals are kind of, I'll say all over the place that sounds unmanaged. It's really based on the developers need. So one of the things that's been cool to see going to the question of do we see kind of what new things are happening is a developer, usually a smaller to mid-sized developer, might be starting a game and say, hey, we're willing to put this in Game Pass on our launch day if you guys will give us X dollars now. And so what we can go do is we can, we'll create a floor for them in terms of the success of their game. They know they're going to get this return. Certain cases will pay for the full production cost of the game. And then they get all the retail opportunity on top of Game Pass. So they can go sell it on PlayStation, on Steam, and on Xbox and on Switch. So for them, what they've said, they've kind of protected themselves from any downside risk that game is going to get made. And then they have all the retail upside. We have the opportunity for date.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thing for Game Pass. And it's true, it sounds like a Baptist as well. The number one metric that we see that drives success of Game Pass is ours played. Like it's not catalog size. It's not actually even the size, the retail price of the games that are included in the subscription. Like we've kind of run the math from all different angles. And I love the fact that if people's happiness with the subscription is in line with how often they use it and play it, that seems like a pretty good thing to me.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Say for us, the biggest change has been just expanding the kind of creative chances we will take because we know we have 15 million subscribers of players who will try something. The marginal cost of trying the next new thing is today a download and with XCloud will just be opening a stream and giving it a try. So we're doing more episodic things, even games like Flight Sim come back because we know we have millions and millions of customers who will give it a try. I don't know how many of those people would have paid 60 bucks for that game, but the business model allows us to try new delivery methods, whether like things like Episodic, new themes. It doesn't all have to be the known genres. Like let's go push on some genres that have either fallen by the wayside or people are making new things. Those are the areas where I see us unlocking capability. I will say, and this is a health.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Does a subscription model change the kind of games you're commissioning or that developers are making? One of the things we've heard from Apple Arcade developers, for example, is that Apple's pushing for engagement time. They want people to play the games for longer so you feel like you're getting every ounce of money out of the money you're spending on the subscription. I buy Madden every year. I just pay the $65. I know I'm going to get my money out of it. But when you're paying that monthly fee, you always need some novelty or you need to come back to a game over and over again. Is it changing how you're thinking about how games should be made and developed over time?”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Parts of Netflix growing. I think the opportunity that was missed there, and I'm not disparaging anybody, but if you're going to grow a bunch of interest in friends because it hit Netflix, what do you do with people's interest when they get to the last episode that's in Netflix? Gaming knows how to do that. Like our gaming partners, whether it's an annualized franchise that comes out, so you're building an audience for the next release, or it's an ongoing perpetual game. Destiny 2 is in Game Pass right now. And those developers know how to continue to manage and grow communities. And that's what I would say in the video space. Like go, if you want to use Netflix for distribution, absolutely. But make sure you know how to catch the signal of fans for you as the content creator when it comes out. And we enable that. That's something like we've got a storefront. We've got discoverability. You can bring, you can have your social, whether it's UPLI or EA or other things on our.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That are just, let's do that with our game. If I think about Studio Wildcard with Ark, a game that does really, really well in Game Pass, it's a good example of they've got a whole ecosystem around what it means to be an ARC and the business model behind that, and they can use Game Pass as a great way for them to grow and find new customers who might not choose the game just on an open marketplace or might never find it. But we can actually raise the visibility of the content. And that's just not true in the video space. I mean, it is true at some level. There's definitely some third party series that I've found like season one and two on Netflix. And then I'll go to watch on the studio's service or even on broadcast if it's something that's on broadcast. I just don't think the video companies were there to catch that growth in friends. You think about something like the office or friends or these things that were kind of critical.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's our goal. That's absolutely our goal. And we see it. And not in all cases, but this is all learning every day. But we see it. And even things like EA play coming on to Game Pass was us working with our partners at EA to say it's not about a per title thing. Let's actually bring the channel that you guys want to go drive and grow value in called EA Play. And let's bring that to Game Pass on console and PC so you see growth in people's attachment to your service through the distribution power of Game Pass. And that's real strength for them, right? It actually for a content partner like an EA or someone else, it helps them create the kind of moat around their content that says, no, this EA plaything has value. And we love that. Now, that's at a portfolio level. There's certain teams.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, so let me make the Netflix comparison just to have done it, just to check the box. The Netflix business model was it started with a bunch of third-party content, right? They were licensing TV shows from networks that had no streaming capability of their own. It was just free money because it was on this thing called Netflix. The TV networks realized, oh crap, they're eating our lunch. And Netflix started pouring money into originals to increase and maintain the value proposition of your Netflix subscription. And they're still doing. They're still spending a lot of money when the TV networks are saying we're all going to build our own streaming platforms now. You're describing the opposite of that. You're saying I'm going to spend all the money up front to make people come onto the service. And then the game developers who are not going to build their own subscription bundles, we don't think, they're going to come onto Game Pass to make a lot of money.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“With Game Pass. So we invest in first party and we're seeing it. So I'd say get to like we're, I think we're at the, we're right at the inflection point of that really being true. And it's definitely true for a lot of developers already. So we invest in our first party as a catalyst for growth. But in the end, I do know that most of the games, just like most of the games that are played on an Xbox, should be third parties. And those third parties have to build a healthy business on Game Pass, otherwise it doesn't work.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, these games are all for sale. And what we've seen, because one, some games have a business model inside of themselves and there's retail availability at the same time and all these other platforms that games are on. One of the big issues that some of the mid tier and smaller games deal with is how do I just get known? How do I actually create that either that Twitch moment that you see with something like Fall Guys or just the, it's live on so many people's social graph because people are playing that people just see it. And Game Pass has been a real avenue for that because we have over 15 million subscribers and a very consumptive kind of base of players and everybody sees what everybody's playing on Xbox Live. When a game hits in this curated marketplace of Game Pass, it becomes more discovered on the network, which is just such a huge viral marketing for the game that's out there. And that's what I need to get to.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wheel that gets it to scale. So, yeah, we're investing in content because we're early in Game Pass and, frankly, in XCloud. And I need to have great content as an attractor to customers into Game Pass and XCloud and our consoles as well. But when I play it out, I want to get to the world. And you've seen this, you've seen developers. It's been great as Game Pass has grown start to come out and say, look, Game Pass is actually a critical part of the discovery process of my game. And it's actually created business opportunity for me, which isn't true in video and music today, right? When I, and because when certain people try to call Game Pass the Netflix of or the Spotify of, there is a fundamental difference that you.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it is. I mean, Game Pass relies on third-party content, and I want it to be that way. I want our third parties to have success. One of the things going back to like previous CEOs, Bill always had this good point of view that you're not really a platform until other developers make more on your platform than you do. That's kind of one of the fundamental definitions of a platform. And I think it's very smart to look that way. And I think about Game Pass as a platform. It's not just a subscription on a platform. And I want third parties to see the distribution and monetization capability of Game Pass as something that is accretive to their business and important to them. I obviously as the owner of Game Pass are going to invest earlier than third parties will, both in when I put games on the service and the number of games that I need in order to create the fly.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't. If that was it, if we want to do the, if I can put Game Pass on iOS, if I open Xbox, I'd kind of do that yesterday, right? If you just look at the scale, right? I mean, there are a billion mobile phones on the planet. Those are general compute platforms that game console does one thing, really. It plays video games. It's sold at for us at a loss. And then you make money back by selling content and services on top. Like the model is just very, very different from something the scale of Windows or iOS or Android. I think there are 200 million game consoles that are sold in a generation across all of our platforms. There's as many, that's like less than a year of phone sales, I think. It's just not even close. And people say, well, the scale shouldn't matter, but it actually does.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What's interesting about that is when you go and push Apple and Google on their platform and how they run it, their first response is, will Xbox and PS5 have the same fees? Do you think that's a fair comparison?”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And as a platform holder, you have to be diligent in how you manage that. But it, frankly, Chrome was built on Windows. I think when compute platforms really get to scale like an Android or an iOS or Windows, I think there's a responsibility for us to keep those open and allow for competition on them. I do fundamentally believe that. And I've seen it work on Windows.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We have not seen that to date, just like we have an on Chrome. I will say that maybe more Chrome, just because I happen to be an Android user, but Google's good at advertising their first party services through their platform, right? So there's a capability of Kenar service run on Safari or Chrome. And then there's also just the promotion capability that those platforms have of anytime I try to go to Game Pass, do I end up at Stadia? Like, you know, those are things that isn't happening today. I'm not accusing anybody of things, but that's just one of the positions we're in and not being a platform holder. Windows is open. Things like Steam were created on Windows because Gabe and the team could go build an app that on Windows sold products. And they didn't have to come through Microsoft. They had open access to the SDK and the user.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do you think that, I mean, this is like in the realm of conspiracy theory, but I've heard it from other developers that Safari is limited in what you're able to accomplish in order to push developers to the App Store and Apple's fee system.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Want access to at scale compute devices that we think should have open access to services that customers want. And we're willing to work with them on safety and other things that people have come up with. We run a platform that we take safety and security very carefully and is very important to us on Xbox. So that's topics not something that's foreign to us. But yeah, it's one of the things that we navigate. We're on Android today, but I think going with a web solution gives us a lot of opportunity on a lot of different devices.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now they actually remain open to the user experience we would like people to see, but we have this avenue of a browser that works for us that we will go and build out, which gives us access, frankly, to a lot of devices. If the device is capable of running a capable web browser, we're going to be able to bring games to it, which is pretty cool. And you'll be able to bring all of your saved games and your friends and everything comes with you. So it's like, it's just Xbox on this new screen with the games. But Apple does remain open in the conversations that we have on this topic. I mean, I can understand their perspective from their position. I don't say I agree with it, but I can understand they have a competitive product in Apple Arcade that is competitive with Xbox Game Pass. I'm sure they like having Apple Arcade as the only game content subscription on their phone.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they're not Microsoft. I won't say anything about Microsoft and phones. I promise that conversation is dead and over. But it's Apple and Google. Apple obviously it's embroiled in a lot of different controversies with various game makers. I think Fortnite is just at the top of the list. But right now, if you wanted to put XCloud onto the iPhone and Apple won't let us do a storefront, they've come up with all these rules. And we've seen, I think Amazon, and I think to some extent Microsoft has said, screw it, we're just going to go through the browser. What is that conversation with Apple like right now? Is it just whatever the Safari is open? We're not going to deal with your App Store.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On what scenarios evolve, I just push back a little bit of, and this is not exactly what you said, but that when streaming comes all the consoles go away or all my local kind of devices that play video games go away. And I'm not quite as sold on that. I think we just have to be nimble in watching what players want.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Inside of a game console so that these providers can go and build their Spotify app and the different things that run. And there's real like hours and hours of usage on these things, which You know, my N64 didn't do that. The first Xbox didn't do that. So I think you're absolutely right that the definitions and the, there will be winners and losers and things that evolve and get combined together. I think what I'm saying is the amount of compute capability in my home I think has increased with the number of streaming signals that have come in, not decreased. And I think gaming will be one of those things as well. Let's take a scenario of, you know, my kids want to play the same game on multiple televisions. Is there going to be something that keeps all of the local input for low latency and other things in my house? And maybe even I want that from a safety and security standpoint. So only the kids in the house can get on Xbox Live and it's not out on the open Xbox Live. But I still, those kids will still want to go play games together on their own screen and other things. So I think we're going to stay eyes open.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think you're going to see that in the next 12 months, right? So I don't think anything's going to stop us from doing that. We used to call a TV was a CRT that's just throwing an image on the back of a piece of glass that I'm looking at. And now, as you said, a TV is really more of a game console stuffed behind a screen that has an app platform and a Bluetooth stack and a streaming capability. So is it really a TV anymore or is just the form and function of the devices that we used to have around our TV been consolidated into the one big screen that I'm looking at? And so I do think you're going to see hardware change. I mean, frankly, even on the console, we see this. One of the primary things that people do on game consoles is watch video, right? Which is they watch Netflix and Disney+ and Hulu and everything else. So what it's meant is we actually have to build out an app platform.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, let me, so the son of speaker is a really good example. Because I can concoct the sort of same example that proves a different point, which is 10 years ago, if I wanted to get satellite television, I need a dedicated satellite television hardware in my house. And if I wanted to get serious radio, I need a dedicated, serious radio equipment in my house. And if I wanted to record anything, I needed a dedicated piece of hardware to record it. And all of that has converged and all of it is delivered over the internet to a single relatively high performance computer, right? Whether that's a Sonos move or like Apple TV or an Xbox, or in many cases the television itself is just a giant tablet that we call a TV, right? And it's got an ARM processor and it runs Linux and we're off to the races.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Use the scale that you can get through cloud and be able to light up multiple blades to deliver whatever experience you want to deliver to somebody would use the power of the cloud. Now, if your local device has almost no compute capability relative to games, obviously we'll move almost everything to the cloud. But if I have a device that's very capable in my home, we should use some of that and we shouldn't ignore it. So I think it will change. I definitely think your point about inflection point is right. I don't think the outcome is by definition going to be everything becomes terminal server in my home and all my games are just running completely in the cloud. And when we think about the evolution of our game platform, it's really more of a hybrid game platform between edge and cloud that we're shooting for.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That streaming games mean that there's no local compute capability that I want in my house. In fact, that's not what we're building towards. So when we think about XCloud, which is our version of Stadia or Luna, I think what it needs to evolve to are games that actually run between a hybrid environment of the cloud and local compute capability and that they can actually take full advantage of the cloud that's there and that's available, but also full advantage of my edge compute capability that I have in my home in the console. And it's really a hybrid between both of those. And that's, I think, the compute model that most people are going to move to with most app development is a hybrid model between Edge and the cloud where things that either from a security or latency or even cost and bandwidth standpoint can be done locally, should be done locally. And things that really could”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think these will be the last big pieces of hardware that we ship, but I totally understand the logic flow that you're running through. Like it makes sense. I'll say, and obviously I don't know. Like I'm learning every day. We react to what our fans and our customers want, not what we need to have happen. But it's funny because I'm sitting here and I look to my right and here's my Sono speaker, the Sonos move, which is a big piece of hardware. Well done. The advent of streaming audio has not caused me to buy fewer audio devices in my home, if anything, it's actually increased the number of like not they're all they're not like, you know, two dollar little speakers that I'm throwing. These are real money spent on real devices. I'd say streaming video the same way. Like if anything I'm spending more on my TVs than I ever have because I care about like I care about the quality and does it have HDR and all of these things because of the capability. So I don't know that it's inevitable.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, that's all wrapped up into the idea of game streaming, right? So just to lay a foundation and feel free to disagree with me if I'm getting this wrong. But there's a part of me that says this is the last generation of hardcore game consoles that you're going to buy at this moment in the future is streaming games over the internet to all kinds of devices in your house. And you've launched a service like that. Google has a service like that called Stadia. Amazon just launched a service like that. We see it from a lot of different directions that the game code will actually run in the cloud. You'll never really know what those computers are. And then you'll just stream them. And I think people call that Netflix for games. You're going to pay a monthly fee to Microsoft Razon or Google or whoever have access to. And there's some differences in business models, but I see that. Well, you're shipping to pieces of hardware, right? Like that, we've talked a lot about the nuts and bolts of your hardware.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Starfield and great games that Todd and the team are working on that people are going to get to go play on their Xbox. And so I feel good, really good, the best I've ever felt about our roadmap. But yeah, it would have been really great to have Halo at launch.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A commitment that we really believe in. We've made huge investments in our first party in growing the amount of games that we can build that can be special on Xbox, that can be there for our Xbox fans so that they feel like they made the right purchase. And that was a miss on our part. I wouldn't change the decision based on kind of the right game, healthy situation for the team and how they're working. But absolutely, it's something that we had planned for Bonnie Ross, who runs the studio. And I Dev Halo there. In the long run, I think what's going to happen is we're going to get a better Halo game at a good time when people can actually get a console. So I feel good about that. I think the game will be better for the time that we're giving it. And I'm incredibly excited about the lineup, not only of Xbox Game Studios, but we've obviously also announced our intent to acquire Zenimax.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We were very public about Halo Infinite and our desire to have Halo at launch. I do think there's some great launch games that are there to go play that maybe get lost up in this dialogue about who's got the better launch lineup, which is, I think, a downside of the games. I'm playing a lot of Tetris effect from my friend Mizaguchi and the team. And it's awesome. The overall that you talk about We wanted Halo at launch that we thought it would have been kind of a real cultural moment for us as Xbox the last time we had done that was the original Xbox and Halo CE from a business standpoint I'm selling every console I can build so it's hard for me to paint out how I would be selling more consoles today I wouldn't be but there's also a fan promise and that's not lost on me that people want to see new great games that play on their on their new platform that they purchase and that's”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And those are great customers, and they're going to buy the games that they want on the platforms where their friends are or where the exclusives are, whatever it is. So it's just, it's not a world where in order for us to win Sony has to lose or Nintendo has to lose or Steam has to lose or something. And if it is, it's not really a Microsoft business. What I mean by that is Microsoft has this perspective, I mean, you look at our market cap, you look at the businesses we aspire to go be. I can't target Microsoft and say, hey, the board of Microsoft, our enemy is this Sony company. We should go take them out. It just doesn't, it's not even in our vocabulary to talk about Sony like that way. They're a partner of ours, frankly, in a lot of different places. So it's our ambition has to be a global business that's growing, that's going through transformation where Microsoft has some real opportunity to help with that transformation and play an important role. And that's how we frame our.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They do, but Know, I could see maybe like, I don't know, like in the end, we know there are millions and millions of people that are going to end up with a switch, a PlayStation, and an Xbox in their home.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it's just not a, I've said it before, not a two may inner one may leave scenario. Like, could you imagine if you were the director of a movie and you wanted another movie to be bad so that people would hire, maybe directors do that, but I don't.”
2020-11-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Microsoft's Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox and the future of games · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT