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

“Most part with the stay at home and the surge. And that's what we should be focused on as an industry. We've done it with things like Crossplay and other things that we focused on breaking some of those tropes. But there is a core that just really hates the other consumer product. And man, that's just so off-putting to me. And again, that word's probably too light. But to me, it's one of the worst things about our industry.”
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
“Think it helps us in the long run in the industry, but there is, and especially in the console space, there's like a core of the core that's I think taken it to a destructive level of I really want that to fail. So the thing that I bought succeeded. And I'd say on both sides, like I'm not saying that, you know, it's all people crushing Xboxes and everybody loves Xbox is always completely inviting to all the PlayStation stuff. And I just I've said before, I find it distasteful. Maybe that is too light. I just really despise it. I don't think we have to see others fail in order for us to achieve the goals. And that's not some kind of like Kumbaya thing. It's actually real. We're in the entertainment business. The biggest competitor we have is apathy over the products that went service games that we build. And we see that today. Everybody's doing well in the industry right now for the moment.”
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
“Be honest, I love the industry I'm in. I don't want any of this, is the job I love. My wife will tell me it's the only job I'm qualified for. But this is definitely the job I love. That tribalism in the industry, if there was anything that would ever drive me out of the industry, it's actually that that you're talking about. You know, I look at shipping a product, shipping a game as one of the bravest things a team can do. You put your product out there. It gets analyzed and prodded and reviewed. It can't defend itself. It's an inanimate object. You can't go on the internet and defend it. We've seen that way too many times. That never works. So when a team releases something into the market for this kind of the world to tear it apart on the internet, it's just such a brave thing for a team to do. I'm never going to vote against any creative team or any product team to do poorly because I have a competitive product. I just, it's not in me. And I don't actually.”
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
“As well. So, I do think this business is going through both for us and Sony and Jim Ryan, somebody I talk to, I have a lot of respect for him. We both have lamented how these pre-orders have gone and what problem are we really solving when we seem to still have as many upset customers as we have because they can't get our product. So I do think it's going to. Push us to think about new models, and it could be like reserve your slide, it could be doing things more direct with the customer, still could have the retailer fulfill the order, but just so people can have more clarity in when they can get a console. It's something we're working on.”
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
“This is actually a good discussion about what you're talking about before with stay-at-home and the transformation of the retail channel, even for day one, so November 10th, we're going line. So we do our pre-orders, whatever, six to eight weeks before that. And we tell the retailers what percent of their allocation we want them to pre-order. The retailers would sell them all, not because they're evil, but if you've got demand, why wouldn't you take the money? But we're like, no, we actually want November 10th to be a moment. We want people to feel like there's some consoles to go by and it's not just the day where everybody gets to go pick up. Pick up their console. I don't know if that's the right decision in today's world. Like that's very old world thinking of people are going to go line up outside of a store kind of, you know, last decade thinking. And I think we should challenge ourselves on that. Is that really the supply chain through to the consumer that we're talking about that is a reality today? And we talk to our retail partners about this.”
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, I think our retail relationships are important. We do think about solving or at least helping with the issue that you talk about. Like we've had real discussions internally about should I be able to reserve my slot? So I'll put some money down. I know my machine's getting built January 20th and I'll get it on February 1st. And we have customers that would do that today.”
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
“Seems like there's still hiccups with the retailers. Like, I would love to just tell Walmart or Best Buy Amazon, like, I want one. Like, here's some money. Just send me when you get it. And like, that's not the way the pre-orders have gone. It's just hard to buy either one. It's hard to buy the PS5 too. Yeah. And it's weird because we're just like fully in the age of e commerce. Do you ever think about just doing more of it yourself?”
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
“Early days. Sorry, I even got to get it right. We figured that our first holiday and probably our second holiday, you would see more of the higher end SKU, just the Series X sold. So we built more Series X's than we did Series S's. I think when we go into kind of spring and summer, we'll probably moderate that a bit over the long run. In most cases, price wins out. Like if you just go back and look at previous generations and when console generations hit the real sweet spot of sales, which is one of the reasons we like having that series asset at its price point. But yeah, and then when we go back into next holiday, which we're already thinking about with supply chain and builds. So we're already in that framing trying to look at what we think our ratio should be between the two. The chips are very different in size, and this is a little bit in the weeds, so we can actually build more of the series 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
“No, we knew that, well, no is probably overstating our level of insight, which I say, we're at the starting line. Was that the Google line?”
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
“Going to see product hit the shelf, but it goes very quickly. And if you want one, I'd recommend it sounding like a salesman now, but I'd recommend picking one up when you see it, because we're going to be in this situation probably into the spring of there's just going to be maybe not as tight as it is now, but demand is just really high and we're building. So we started the supply chain back at kind of end of summer. We're building, we're building there is just physics in how many lines at the fabs you can put and the assembly lines. So you can just build as many as you can build. And that's what we've been doing. There are decisions around mix, like how many of the S and the X do you build. So you kind of, you have to make decisions on that.”
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, no, no. We started manufacturing kind of late summer. We were a little bit later than the competition because we were waiting for some specific AMD technology in our chip. So we were a little bit behind where they where Sony was in terms of building units. But we started in late summer. And when you do that, then you have to ship them to all the right retailers and distributors. So there's a time lag, even in when you start and even when they're coming off the assembly line, like when are they sitting at retail shelves? But we've been building at full capacity for now, you know, a few months. And we continue to. So units continue to hit the shelves. Demand is just incredibly high right now. And it's like the biggest disappointment for me in this launch, but I'm also happy with it is people love the product and the demand is high such that when you're”
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
“Feeling I can be a member of Xbox regardless of whether I own the console. I'm still a member of the community. I might play on PC. I might play streaming on my phone. I might own a console. But I'm always a member of Xbox. So this Xbox Game Pass was an attempt to make sure it tied back to, yeah, I'm just a member of Xbox. But I think over time, and even the Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X was to bring it all back to, yeah, I'm just Xbox. Like, where do you play? I play on Xbox. And that doesn't necessarily mean one piece of hardware. It could mean many different things. But I agree. Like it's a journey for us in going from one console that has one name and one price point to something that's a little more expansive.”
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
“Like, and that's the difference not to make everything about the iPhone, but like if you asked me to explain the iPhone lineup, I can't really do it. But when I walk in the store, it's pretty clear, right? One's big, one's not, one's $1,000, one's $800, whatever. Like, they differentiate based on normal people's vocabulary of how much does it cost and what does it do. So from that perspective, we're very happy with the early results on both consoles. A lot of new people to Xbox are coming in through Series S, which is what we would have expected. It's lower price. There's Game Pass there, so people get a bunch of games. NX is our power play, right? It's the thing, it's the most powerful console. It's the, if you want the highest fidelity, the highest experience, we want it there. On Game Pass, it's a good question. And I went back and forth, and I still sometimes, I really want it to all just be about Xbox. And I want people to get into this.”
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 the hardware side, it is, and I think sometimes inside of the industry is we want to be poking at ourselves, I think we can look at Series S and Series X, even the Anunciation of S and X isn't the easiest to kind of differentiate. But for most consumers, they walk in and one's $500 and one's $300. 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
“And Game Pass is can we create a platform that's more inviting to more people, including the hardware that we build and even how we sell it with things like Xbox All Access, allowing people to buy the hardware on a monthly basis as opposed to one fixed fee. It's all about how we bring more people in.”
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
“Not growing the number of console users that are out there. It's actually been a fairly fixed number over the last decade, which for us that love console gaming, like we do should be like a sign of, hey, we don't want to be about raising the price on retail products because you have a fixed number of customers and you just want to figure out how do I get 10 more bucks from them. We want to think about how do we bring more people into the gaming funnel, have more people experience this art form that we love. And so, you know, the question of would you go do this and why would you not go do it? The pushback against that was always, but we want to grow, we want to find new customers because it can't just be a fight over the same customers that we've all seen that every year get your average age of your product goes up by one year every year because it's the exact same demographic that's just moving with you. And all of those things were important when we thought about the decision on S and like I said about X.”
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
“Just complexity in the market, I would say. Well, I guess the way I would frame it, the best argument against doing it was Sony. Like, we didn't think that they were going to do it. And I don't, I have a ton. I've said it before. I have a ton of respect for what Sony does. So it's not to say what they're doing is wrong. But if it's, we're going to go compete with one hardware competitor and we just want to make it as easy as possible to compare our one product to their one product. That was the thought process that would have you push to say no, just do one thing. But when we.”
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 really centered on that how many people can we impact with everything that we do. And that decision wasn't easy and was questioned a number of times by internally. But we feel really good about where we are now that we've launched and we see the result. But that was a good, tough decision.”
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
“Inclusion of how do we include more people in the launch euphoria and hype and everything that happens and make it as accessible to more people as possible going to that satya push on how do you really build things that can get to true scale and influence everybody and impact everybody on the planet. And I know like Series S and Siri, there's more with XCloud and Game Pass that we can talk about. But the decision to do two hardware SKUs was really centered on that of $499 in the US for the Series X. That's a lot of money. That's a lot of money during a time of economic uncertainty and everything else. Now we didn't know when we made those plans that we'd be sitting here, but even regardless of COVID, $499 is a lot of money. So can we build an accessible console that will deliver a great next gen experience clearly different, but a next-gen experience at a more accessible price point?”
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 decision, just thinking real time, the decision to ship two consoles at the same time is probably one that's worth kind of pushing on because we've never done that before with the differences that we have between Series S and Series X. I can't think of other console launches that have had that delta in the products that have come out at day one. And that was really a decision that clearly you could have made a different decision. Clearly you could have shipped only one of those two SKUs at launch would have made some of the kind of supply chain and other things easier naming and other things. But we started from a point of view of gaming should be growing going back to our first point as an industry. And Microsoft should be growing as part of that industry. I want to grow faster than the industry's growing, but I want to be part of a growing industry. And it was really this.”
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 just thinking about those decision making styles and frameworks and what you've picked up walk me through a decision leading up to the launch of this new Xbox where you pulled from that where that decision could have gone a different way but you I don't know like do you put on your bomber hat and be like we have to be focused on sales here like we're you know it's like it's time or is it Sony's launching a console too I'm gonna put on my gates hat we're gonna have to crush the competition”
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 don't exactly know how we're going to achieve. Like there's no math today that says how we get to all of our carbon neutral and carbon negative goals, but being bold to stand up and be accounted for in the public eye, I think, is just incredibly, incredibly a great learning opportunity for me and I value it.”
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
“In selling our products and how our customers perceive our products, not just how we built something or even why we built it, but what do they, our customers feel about what we built? And then moving on to Satya, he's just such an empathetic leader, somebody who's connected to the feelings and motivations. Like when he says we're here to empower every person on the planet to achieve more, which is the mission statement of the company, every person and organization on the planet, he truly believes that. And it's amazing to see him talk about that in our leadership meetings like, okay, how is this going to touch 7 billion people on the planet? How is this what we're doing? And when you're a company with the market cap that we have and the capacity that we have, that's the scale we should be working at. And Satya just raises us to that every moment. Like it's, and you see us standing up for climate change, you see us stand up for representation in our senior ranks and making public statements that frankly”
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
“Consistent the things that he will push on. And I think that consistency for a large team as the company grow is very valuable. If the teams can kind of predict how you're going to respond or react or the things that you're going to focus on as opposed to being moody or random, I found real value in that from Bill. Steve was just so focused on customer and selling. And I thought for me as a developer, it was a great way to learn. Under Steve, they sent me overseas. I worked in the UK for a while. And that was the company's effort to expand the kind of perspective of some of the leaders to get out of Redmond. What is it like to work for Microsoft when you're not in our zip code in the same time zone? And that was all really the push that Steve had at the time of let's get very close to our customer and our selling what we do.”
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 haven't really talked about this or I love the question. I started as obviously all Bill G. You know, Bill had Seche just a presence in the company, both from a technical standpoint and from a leadership standpoint. And I kind of learned the value in people believing in the direction that an organization is going in and having a leader and bill at the time that was just so consistently kind of maniacally consistent in the things that he would focus on and push us. I was a developer at the time. So it was sometimes the wrath of Bill when my code was being used, checked in or whatever wasn't always the easiest, but he was very consistent in the things that he cared about. And even today, I review my gaming business with Bill probably two, three times a year. And he's still remarkably.”
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 want to get into that for sure, but just on the sort of zoom out level, you have been to Microsoft for a long time. You've seen three different CEOs. There have been three very different styles of how to run that organization. There have probably been even more versions of Microsoft itself under Gates, Bomber, Nadella. What have you pulled into your decision-making style?”
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
“It's been cool to see the kind of some of the genres and stuff that have really popped to the front in gaming when I think about things like Among Us and Fall Guys and stuff, really finding an audience animal crossing, which has always been big. But you have people like Gary Weda doing his talk show inside of Animal Crossing, and it almost seems normal in this time that that would be happening. Gaming in certain times gets really hyper-focused on realism and grit and kind. And it's nice to see that during these times you've got a breadth of things that are really finding.”
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, there's a few of them now. It's funny. We used to be like the solo outpost here at Microsoft, but everybody's around here now. And for gaming, though, I think with, you know, you've seen Twitch, you've seen the power of gaming on YouTube. So you've seen Discord and other places where people come together to talk about games, watch games, watch others play games. So I say the acceleration, and I don't know if I'm accurate in my timeline, but I feel like it's a little more gradual for us in gaming because we've already been so far along that kind of using community and virality as a way for people to get into gaming, but we've definitely seen a surge. And I don't think it's something that's going to reverse. I think we've just become more and more a part of the way people entertain and connect.”
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
“It could be longer. I think gaming was further along some of those communal aspects of our art form than some of those other, I don't, when I'm watching video, streaming video services, I don't know that I feel connected to anybody that's not in the room while I'm doing that. Some of the shopping stuff and stuff, maybe in different parts of the world sitting in Seattle, we see a lot of online shopping and delivery. We just always have. So maybe it's different.”
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
“It's interesting instead of the year or two with some of the other trends that have accelerated, I've heard e-commerce is a five-year acceleration because of the pandemic, streaming and cable television falling apart and everyone moving to streaming services way faster than people thought was going to happen. You're thinking with games it's only a year acceleration?”
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 think we've seen the acceleration of some of the timelines and kind of trends in gaming over the last six months. We've definitely accelerated maybe a year or two in terms of adoption of some of this. But I think gaming has always been building towards this moment of being a real unifier.”
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
“But definitely not what I expected as an intern. I mean, just from both my own career, if we go into kind of my side of it, which I won't dwell on. But I've never been one with kind of huge career roadmap. I kind of follow my passion and what I'm passionate about teams I get to work with. In terms of where we are in gaming, I think it's somewhat regretful, but it's also nice to see that during this time of social distancing and disconnect from our friends and our family that gaming's really pushed to the forefront as a real communal way for people to connect. And I think the world needs more of that. I've kind of been on my gaming as a connective tissue opportunity for people of different backgrounds, different beliefs coming together. And during the C19 pandemic, people staying high at home, we've really seen a rise.”
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 quite a rise. And this moment seems like a particularly gigantic inflection point in gaming, right? We're talking about the entire architecture of games moving to streaming. We've got two big consoles. It's exploded in the mainstream culture. Is this what you expected? When you were an intern in 1988, does this look like what your wildest dreams? Is it meaningfully different? What's your view on just sort of where we are right now?”
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
“Our third guest. I'm excited to talk to you. There's a lot to talk about. I have a million questions about the Xboxes. There are two of them you just launched, The Future of Games and Streaming. There's a lot to talk about, but I want to start a little bit bigger picture. You are a Microsoft Lifer. You started as an intern in 1988, like screwing around in video games. You were now the executive vice president of gaming. I think you report to the CEO now.”
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
“Payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 or 12 month plan required, $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only greater than 50 GBR is busy C terms.”
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