YouSaid · the spoken record

Tom Warren

lines on the record: 35
first: 2026-02-26
most recent: 2026-02-26
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

“On TV and all this sort of stuff. Xbox Cloud Gaming. But the reality of it is that where they're at now with like Xbox Cloud Gaming, it's their vehicle for cross-platform, no doubt, is that mobile is a small percentage of”
2026-02-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Xbox's executive shakeup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“With the mobile stuff, it's like what essentially Phil is saying here is that we need all this content to pull eyes away from TikTok, right? Because no one is buying our console of a certain age, right? And they're worried that people my age, like 30s, 40s and they're the people that are keeping the consoles, but no one in their 20s right now is buying a console anymore. That's their worry. And then the next generation is not going to buy consoles. That's starting to impact Sony as well. It's not a unique thing to Microsoft. Don't know so much about Nintendo because they are very unique, definitely with the Switch. But I think that's their worry. And that's driven this whole thing for content. We need content. We need a way to get people on mobile. Where they are, this whole thing of like play across different devices.”
2026-02-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Xbox's executive shakeup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Obviously, with Nintendo, they have a strong collection of IP, right? They can leverage and they can be exclusive and they always point out great content that people buy the hardware for. They don't have a problem there. Microsoft's gaming output over the last decade hasn't been the strongest, right? Recently it's got a lot better, but they don't have the respect of the industry for their content either. They just don't do the sort of storytelling that Sony does with PlayStation games. They don't do that sort of content. So they've had a content problem, which is hence all the acquisitions, right? But I think...”
2026-02-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Xbox's executive shakeup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm actually kind of at a loss here, right? There's this desire to put mobile games on Apple's platforms, on Apple's terms in this very clear statement that if they don't do that over time, the business will become untenable. And then the rest of the industry is not doing that at all and they seem to be fine. How do you reconcile those ideas?”
2026-02-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Xbox's executive shakeup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I listened to that and I think, well, Nintendo exists, they seem to be doing just fine without being on phones. Sony is running what seems like a fine business in the PlayStation. Without running on phones. And then right next to all of this, or you'll be the most interesting category of gaming devices in the past five years is Steam Dex and Steam Deck alikes, which are all running Windows games better on Linux than on Windows.”
2026-02-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Xbox's executive shakeup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In terms of the Activision opportunity, and I keep saying this over and over, and it is true, it definitely starts with a view that people want to play games on every device that they have. And in a funny way, the smallest screen that we play on is actually the biggest screen when you think about install base in phone. And that's just a place where if we don't gain relevancy as a gaming brand, and I think other, we're not alone in seeing this. Over time, the business will become kind of untenable for any of us that if we don't, if we're not able to find customers on phones, on any screen that somebody wants to play on, that you really are going to get segmented to a niche part of gaming, that running a global business will become very challenging.”
2026-02-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Xbox's executive shakeup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, the mobile side, like I said with the Xbox mobile store earlier, I think the King stuff would have definitely played heavily into that. They could have sold exclusive content in that store and not had to pay 30% cut to Apple, Google, Valve, et cetera. So I think there was a vision for that to be additive to the business and the growth and everything. But here, I mean, the mobile stuff is still, I don't know their mobile strategy, really. Actually, Phil was...”
2026-02-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Xbox's executive shakeup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Still early days, and they've consumed it in a way that it's hard to tell, right? This is the classic thing with Microsoft Financials every quarter. They hide something else that's not quite working into like they've done surface devices. They used to do surface revenue. Now it's Windows and OEM and devices. So they bundle that stuff when it's not quite working. So I think we'll know if it's not quite working when they start doing tricks like that. But at the moment it's still too early to say, but”
2026-02-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Xbox's executive shakeup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that's when they bought Activision, right? That interview was right after they'd announced the deal, it was before it closed regulatory approval and everything. But their thesis for My Activision was we need to be a bigger player in mobile because that's where the new gamers are. And Activision has all these mobile games and actually Call of Duty, which is what everyone is focused on, is”
2026-02-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Xbox's executive shakeup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That year was quite pivotal internally. So I think that was when they kind of realized that. Game Pass wasn't going to do the number, like they'd hit a ceiling on console and they didn't have this mobile growth that they were expecting. And internally at that time exec, I think it was 2021 or 2022, but they did a slide deck, the hardware gaming team, which leaked in the FTC trial. And it was like the ambition was 100 million people on Game Pass by 2030. And a lot of that growth was through Series S and X that was the desire, right? But some of it was also cloud and mobile, right? A chunk of it. And obviously that's not going to happen unless something crazy happens in the next four years. That growth is just not there for them at the moment. I think the last time they reported it was 34 million. So the messaging changed in 2022, basically, from like Game Pass is our thing to, well, it's going to be like 20% of.”
2026-02-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Xbox's executive shakeup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People like to own their music is a thing that he used to run around saying all the time. Now I feel like we're hearing it from the games industry. Is that just the point on the curve that you're at? Is some people are going to buy it and some people are going to stream and we're going to one day, five years from now wake up and it's all streaming in subscriptions or is it now games are fundamentally different and I'm definitely not smarter than people who did music subscriptions or video subscriptions. I just think the fundamentals of gaming are different so it's that subscriptions will be part of the solution but not the only solution. Even as Phil was saying that to me, I was thinking I don't believe you but you've gone all in on all of these moves to get recurring revenue. And we were having that conversation in the context of them by Activision and Candy Crush is the most stable recurring revenue you can get. It's endless downloadable content. It's endless power-ups. It's people paying money to literally play the game every day. Did you have the same reaction to them saying their goal was”
2026-02-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Xbox's executive shakeup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it's really funny. So when Phil Spencer was on the show in 2022, I asked him about this vision that the future of Xbox is Netflix. Here's what he had to say. Then there's the other part, which is man, it would be really cool if everyone just paid us $15 a month all the time. And the game came out and everyone was just happy and that base of revenue was recurring and it was a little more stable than hits, than console generations. Is that the move? Because that seems like where you have been building for a long time, but it's harder to get there than maybe anyone anticipated. We don't have this vision of everybody's paying us $15 a month. We think the subscription is an interesting business model for certain kinds of games and for certain customers. But I really see it as diversifying the way people build their library of games or creators can reach the customers that they want to reach with the content that they build. But it'll always be part of the business, in my view. I think people buying their games and owning their games will be an important part of the business for years and years to come. To be fair, I heard that line at the beginning of the streaming transition in music very famously from”
2026-02-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Xbox's executive shakeup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Whoever's, you know, whether it be Google or Apple, they've appealed. We've just pushed it down so many months. So yeah, so they've had all these hurdles with this strategy. But I think... Ultimately, Game Pass has a problem where it's going to, it fundamentally will eat into those margins of studios. And it's like, how do they, if they can't scale it up, then they have to increase the cost of it. So again, we saw that last year they went up by like 50% Game Pass Ultimate. So they've been doing all these things where they respond to this strategy with a goal of either increasing the revenues or scaling up. And it just hasn't been going smoothly, let's be honest, especially over the past couple of years.”
2026-02-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Xbox's executive shakeup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then fast forward from that point, from launching XCloud and having all those issues to a couple of years ago, they're still trying to get that resolved, right? They're still trying to push for this app. They've still trying to get a store in there now, essentially is the idea. They're going to have an exports mobile store. So we've moved on from, you know, having an exports cloud gaming app is more ambitious now. We want to do a store. We want to sell content in there directly to people. And there was the promise that that was going to arrive from both field and Sarah, to be fair. But then Sarah then promised it was going to launch in a month, in an interview. And that was two years ago. And it hasn't happened. A lot of that idea of going for mobile recently and trying to do this cloud store thing has just been overpromising and under delivering and relying on regulatory change that just hasn't come or it's come and”
2026-02-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Xbox's executive shakeup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That you said they hit a bunch of regulatory hurdles. They had to launch it as a Xbox.com forward slash play in your browser. You couldn't get an app or anything like that. So that completely knocked them back, right? Even when they were trying to play test it, Apple were like on the test flight saying, no, you have to change this. They were very restricting in what they could do. So that kind of put their strategy back. Now, who you blame for that?”
2026-02-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Xbox's executive shakeup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just getting more complicated to develop games these days and a lot more expensive. So they've had those issues with Game Pass and ultimately I think the strategy was to respond to try and get that growth, to try and scale up this idea of and the way they put it was 3 billion gamers, right? That was the launch of XCloud. And remember XCloud and now it is. Exports Cloud Gaming was originally a mobile play. So it was literally to try and get people into the idea of playing streaming on mobile with these attachments to your phone essentially.”
2026-02-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Xbox's executive shakeup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Mobile, etc. So I think that was the only kind of response they could and it was designed to be consumer friendly, right? Like you got day one games that they published immediately. So they took a bit of a risk. It was quite a bold move really to do that and still Sony doesn't do day one games, for example. So they took a risk. The problem with Game Pass that's happened, obviously they've had to fuel it with content, right? So they've done all these acquisitions, Bethesda, Activision, nameless others as well. But the problem then with Game Pass is that you're giving your games away with a subscription, but you need to scale that up, right? So it needs to hit a certain amount of million people that you've got that concurrent revenue every quarter and you can rely on where it isn't cannibalizing or eating into the traditional sales of those games that fuel the costs for developing this game, which frankly.”
2026-02-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Xbox's executive shakeup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah. And that led up to kind of 2017 and the launch of XCALD and all that sort of stuff. But going back to that sort of era, they lost that generation, right? And it was a huge... Huge cost to them because that's when that was the generation that people started their digital libraries, right? That weren't on PC. People on PlayStation have built up those libraries. They're not willing to move away from those libraries now. So they knew they'd lost that real key generation. So the response was let's do Game Pass because that will allow people to bring their games to different devices.”
2026-02-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Xbox's executive shakeup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because they essentially lost to Sony, permanently lost to Sony. There was no coming back with a new generation. Did that work? I mean, I think we know now there's executive turnover. It didn't work, but did it ever work? Was there ever a glimmer of it working?”
2026-02-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Xbox's executive shakeup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think they're going to change the strategy all that much because the strategy kind of makes sense in a way like you want to get to mobile you want to get to cloud because you and that's how you're going to get more users right ultimately into your into your system without not selling enough consoles essentially so I don't think the strategy is terrible but I think the execution has been over the past couple of years I think that that's been the problem predominantly is the execution of the strategy the messaging publicly has been pretty bad So I think it's more a regime change that's needed to bring some sort of element of people who understand user acquisition, right? And I think that's kind of where Ash is coming in.”
2026-02-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Xbox's executive shakeup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it feels like actually the decision is not so much about Phil Spencer and Sarah Bond. It's this whole strategy failed. And now we're going to try a new one. And I'm just curious if you have insight into the balance, right? How much is the strategy failed? We just need a new regime versus we need a new strategy and Sarah specifically cannot execute a new strategy.”
2026-02-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Xbox's executive shakeup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Actually, this is my big question. And this is again, you know, there's the reporting you have about Sarah as a manager and a leader, which I want to come to. But then there's the, well, it's Microsoft. Oh, Sachy Nella care about is mobile and cloud. That's like not even the AI part of it. This is a business that runs huge cloud services in Azure. And needed a new foothold in mobile. And they basically bought Candy Crush to get a bunch of mobile revenue. Of course, that's what they wanted to do.”
2026-02-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Xbox's executive shakeup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're trying to pin blame on whoever it is, it's like it comes from the top ultimately, like Satya and Amy. They're pushing these margins. And I think they're slightly unrealistic in the context of gaming anyway. There's not the margins that Sony has, for example. They've put the pressure on Phil has, I think he's kind of stepped away a little bit over the last couple of years. So not so laser focused on Xbox. And then that's allowed Sarah to have a lot of power over Xbox and accumulate marketing power and do the this is the exports campaign in her own org. And then just, yeah, it just hasn't gone well. It hasn't gone well for consoles. Even if you argue that Microsoft perhaps doesn't care about sending consoles, which yeah.”
2026-02-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Xbox's executive shakeup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Get to mobile, all this stuff, and there was a lot of like. I guess trying to rush that, it felt like and forgetting that the console was their base of building up Game Pass and their base of taking those people and perhaps moving them elsewhere and user acquisition, growth, all that sort of stuff. And it just feels like they tried to rush that and they did this as an Xbox campaign, which is just super strange. It was trying to say that phone was an Xbox. And it was born in this idea that they need to speed up the margins they need to get more revenue, get more growth and improve those margins essentially.”
2026-02-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Xbox's executive shakeup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A couple of things, right? Like, so obviously Microsoft came in as a balloon now, right? Because it's got Bethesda, obviously Activision Blizzard has made it bigger than ever before, right? And then you've got this tension of Microsoft get the corporate Microsoft of Satya Nadella and Amy Hood putting the pressure on that new division to return the money that they've invested into this project, essentially. So through profit margins. So they've cranked that pressure up over the past couple of years and it's forced Phil, Sarah, everyone under them to then respond, right? So they've done these studio closures, they've done cuts, they've done prices, they've tried to accelerate getting more people using export services essentially. So that became the strategy of like, okay, we need to get to TVs.”
2026-02-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Xbox's executive shakeup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Importantly, Amy Hood, the CFO of Microsoft, I'm saying we've done some of the biggest acquisitions in history, certainly the biggest acquisitions in Microsoft history. None of this came to anything. We got to reboot this whole thing. Does that feel as important inside Microsoft as maybe Sarah wasn't the right person?”
2026-02-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Xbox's executive shakeup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Want to come to Asha, the new leadership, and particularly sort of the Microsoft AI of it all, because that seems like an important piece of the puzzle. I just want to stick with Phil and Sarah for one more second. The reporting you have done about Sarah personally and her skills as a manager and potentially CEO, and then there's Phil. And the strategy he pursued for Xbox and Microsoft Gaming, a huge part of that strategy is making Microsoft Gaming as big as it is, bigger than Xbox. Acquiring Activision, doing all the other acquisitions of the studios they've done. I look at this and I say, well, it doesn't matter if Sarah was the best manager or the worst manager. The strategy that she was instrumentally a part of failed. And I kind of see this and I say, okay, if I'm such an Adelaide or...”
2026-02-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Xbox's executive shakeup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But to Xbox fans, and that gaming segment, if they see a non gamer, it's like. Particularly with experts, I think because feel has kind of instilled that over the years, so they come to that expectation. So yeah, I think that was the surprise of it, but I don't think Sarah Baum was a surprise to me.”
2026-02-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Xbox's executive shakeup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not what you'd expect, I guess, from what you see of her and stuff. So to me, it wasn't a surprise. I was like, not surprised to see her not named, but I think it was more of a surprise to see Asher named, right? Like that was kind of the surprise to me. I know Asher a little bit of speculatory.”
2026-02-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Xbox's executive shakeup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, so Sarah's kind of become the face of exports during that time, and she took over the platform work, the hardware work. So whenever there was any mention of like the next gen Xbox, it was Sarah that would come out and talk about it and not feel. So that's a change in itself, right? Because it's usually Phil. So I think everyone just kind of thought, okay, well, she's been prepped for to be Phil's replacement eventually, whether it be a couple of years, five years, whatever. It didn't happen. But behind the scenes, I know that Xbox fans had heard and expected that this was going to happen. Cerebon would be the heir apparent. But behind the scenes for a good year or so, I've been hearing different things about Cerebon. Different from what Perhaps the public perception is of her and just different.”
2026-02-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Xbox's executive shakeup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The Ashros, the successor, because that just wasn't a quiet surprise hire, really. But yeah, so Sarah has always been the sort of number two. She's always traveled with Phil and always been kind of like the face of Xbox over the past couple of years, as Phil's kind of, I say he's stepped back a little bit since the Activision Blizzard acquisition a little bit publicly”
2026-02-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Xbox's executive shakeup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And this is, I think, the shakeup, right? We knew Phil was going to retire. He'd been messaging that for some time. He's been there for a long time. He's a Microsoft Lifer, really. Phil's been on this show before, and we're going to run some clips from his past interviews on Doder because I want to get your take on what happened between those interviews and now, but at just a very high level, we knew Phil was going, is it that everyone expected Sarah to be his successor and that didn't happen? And that's the surprise here? I think there's two surprises, right? It's obviously that Sarah wasn't named Xbox chief.”
2026-02-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Xbox's executive shakeup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Over the years. So this week, as you were playing with your beautiful new baby, Microsoft initiated a major shakeup at Xbox, something we've seen coming for a little bit, but maybe not on this scale or this magnitude. Describe what happened at Xbox this week. Phil Spencer, the long time sort of CEO of Microsoft Gaming technically, but Xbox Chief is what he's known as. He's retiring, so he's leaving Microsoft. Sarah Bond, the Xbox president, is also leaving Microsoft. And then they're actually promoting Ashashama, who used to be on the core AI side at Microsoft to the CEO of Microsoft Gaming. So replacement Phil Spence, essentially. So yeah, big news. A big shake up, shall we say, of Xbox, which I think has been, I think with Phil Spencer, it's been a long time coming, right? I think Xbox fans have expected that retirement, but perhaps not so much Sarah Bond leaving.”
2026-02-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Xbox's executive shakeup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That new leadership will take some big swings and make something happen again. Okay, here's Verge Senior Reporter Tom Warren on the future of Xbox. Here we go. Warren, you're a senior reporter at The Verge. You are currently out in paternity leave, but Microsoft just brought you back. This happens every time I take vacation or leave. Microsoft decides we're going to do something massive and ruin Tom's life. It's just punishment for all of the scoops you have dropped on this company”
2026-02-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Xbox's executive shakeup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Welcome to Dakota. I'm Neil I Patel, editor in chief of the Verge, and Dakota is my show about big ideas and other problems. Today, let's talk about the future of Xbox. Phil Spencer, the CEO of Microsoft Gaming, and a two-time Dakoter guest who's led Xbox for more than a decade just resigned. But in a shocking twist, his deputy and long assumed successor, Sarah Bond, is also out too. And Microsoft Gaming is now in the hands of Asha Sharma, one of Microsoft's AI executives with no prior game industry experience. It's a major leadership transition that suggests Microsoft wants to make serious changes to its gaming division, which owns franchises like Halo, Call of Duty, and Minecraft. There's literally no better person to talk about all this with than Tom Warren, a senior editor here at The Verge and author of the excellent newsletter, Notepad. Tom just had a new baby. He's actually out on parental leave right now, but Microsoft has a long habit of disrupting his time off with major news. So Tom was gracious enough to come back on the show after”
2026-02-26 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Inside Xbox's executive shakeup · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT