Xbox's Phil Spencer Admits Last Summer's Mistakes; Says Titanfall is "Massive;" Will test the Cloud

Yesterday Microsoft Games Studio Head Phil Spencer was interviewed by Geoff Keighley at SXSW Gaming Expo, and while the talk wasn't live streamed, and Spencer admitted that last summer wasn't a high point, also talking up the release of Titanfall.

[M-M]

Phil Spencer will be the one to change the image of the Xbox One, for the better.

[Abriael]

He's the best they have. No doubt about that. And I'd say it's not random that he's the head of their game studios. He's Microsoft's Shu :D

[GrandTheftZamboni]

Unfortunately Elop is coming.

[jessupj]

I think it's maybe the first time MS has admitted past mistakes. I'm really starting to respect Mr. Spencer. It's great that he been honest and genuine.

I can tell he genuinely has a passion for gaming and his brand. Hopefully that healthy attitude will rub off on Penello and Hyrb.

[mcstorm]

I agree. I am really liking the news that is coming out of the xbox department at the moment. I think Titan fall is going to be a re launch for the xbox one and we will start to see the vision microsoft have for the one going forward. I am loving my console and glad I picked one up. But the way I look at it at the moment is all 3 consoles on the market are very good and it just depends on what games your interested in to which console you should get.

[christocolus]

You gotta love this guy. Sometimes i wonder if Don had Phil & the others locked/tied up all through out his reign..cos its amazing how things have changed for the better since Don stepped down.

Great job Phil..you doing an awesome job.keep it up.

[urwifeminder]

Never heard of the guy, seems to be on the money though.

[Kiwi66]

where have you been, he has been in a lot of articles on here lately

[urwifeminder]

As soon a staff come up in gaming conversation I tend to switch off faster than I would playing a stealth game.

[ArbitorChief]

I like Phil Spencer, he's honest and he interacts with us hardcore gamers a lot of Twitter. He's really the only person at Microsoft I trust right now.

[Mikefizzled]

I was trying to think of someone so I could disagree with you but I can only think of Mike Ybarra or Qwik as hes referred to as. But as studio manager he doesn't get air time unlike Spencer, Harrison, Mehdi or Hryb.

[SaturdayNightBeaver]

Did you just put MS and Hardcore in same sentence? Good for you man.

[PsychOff]

So what is Titanfall doing with the cloud other than servers? All I know sucks for South Africa.

[Kavorklestein]

Oh well. South africa has many natural wonders and exotic things to explore on it's landmass, I wouldn't dream of living there and be crying over video games I can't play lol.

And Spencer, (my name is also Spencer lol)is really a cool cool guy. He makes me have a good feeling about being an Xbox gamer and doesn't seem to be as shady as some xbox dudes... Especially Mattrick

[Father__Merrin]

Merrin says

Xbox fanstylers last summer said all was fine, now head of Microsoft gaming says last summer wasnt a high point and admitted mistakes?

will they also go along with whats been said to them now?

either way i think Xbox is in better hands now with Phil S, i personally thought Matrick was an idiot and annoying as hell...

[DeathOfTheFanBoy]

I don't think even the most hardcore MS fanboy would dispute the fact that their messaging was awful, I was fine with 24hr check-in personally but the way they delivered that proposal amongst other things was hideous! Thank god Don left, he did the launch no favors whatsoever!

I really like both Phil's though, they seem clear and sincere in what they say.

[ZombieDust]

No fanboy here but I am a long time xbox guy. And you are right. When the Xbox was first announced with their terrible messaging I went and preordered a ps4. Luckly xbox went back on that and I decided to cancel that preorder and wait til now to decide what system to get

[Ko_Uraki]

Of course they made some bad mistakes, but nowcthey are working well and hard. We will see the first fruits this week.

[Game0N]

Its hard for me to trust anything microsoft says anymore no matter how humble spencer is. Something is always fishy with microsoft and I dont know if they'll ever be able to shake that.

[Letros]

At least they don't lie about their game resolution

[Ron_Danger]

I thought resolution didn't matter...

Oh that's right... The common fanboy practice of using a point when it's convenient for whatever the current argument is.

The only reason resolution is such a hot topic was because the 360 consistently had a higher resolution than the PS3 for multiplatform games and the MS fanboys let the Sony fanboys know it in every comment section.

[ZombieDust]

@ron_Danger lol... Your first reply here jumps to conclusions then you go on to get on a guy for doing just that

[n4rc]

Constantly see this same claim..

Do us a favor.. Care to share where ms lied to you to cause you to feel this way?

[Ron_Danger]

He accused them of being "fishy", not lying. You defensively jumped to that conclusion on your own.

Every company does things that could make consumers lose thrust in them.

A lot of people lost trust in Sony when they arrogantly announced the PS3 price of $600 and told people that it's so good they should get a second job to pay for one.

A lot of people lost trust in Microsoft when they announced the XB1 and then talked about 24 hour check ins and tv tv tv.

[n4rc]

Actually.. No

He said he can't trust anything ms says.. That implies that what they previously said was untrue..

Or in other words, lied

And you lost trust in ms for talking about TV? That makes zero sense

Or do you only trust people that tell you what you want to hear?

[Ron_Danger]

Wow n4rc, you are on perminant defensive spin cycle. The guy doesn't trust Microsoft because of their past actions and you act like he just committed high treason.

And way to show your true fanboy colors by taking one small part of a sentence and making a whole comment on it.

Just wondering, (and this is just for n4rc) what part of MS' Kinnect E3 reveal was trustworthy? The part where the actors on stage weren't synced up to the video playing in front of them?

Or during the XB1 reveal when they said there was a 24 hour check in and you'd have to register your games in order to sell them. What part of that is trustworthy?

Of all the slogans and catch phrases that companies use, you must follow your own: forgive and forget.

I'm a Sony fanboy till the end, but I still remember whenever they make unfavorable decisions (Killzone 2's trailer vs final gameplay for example).

Your brand loyalty is bordering on unfortunate and pathetic. No one should ever really trust a corporation. If politicians and police officers are getting arrested daily for corruption, what makes you think these corporations are squeaky clean?

And since you want a MS lie: better with Kinnect.

[Hicken]

RROD. They lied about that.

As a consumer, that should be enough.

Outside of outright lies, they've also done an exceptionally poor job at understanding the market, specifically core gamers. Which is why they pushed an obviously unpopular DRM method with their consoles while telling us gamers we weren't ready and didn't understand. It's why the 360 has been virtually devoid of exclusives as they stockpiled them to release on the XB1.

Making backdoor deals for exclusivity on titles and content, while not putting as much money and time into exclusives they actually own.

Flat-out abandoning their old hardware as soon as the new piece rolls out.

Hiring a company killer to head up Xbox.

Getting the picture as to why someone might not trust Microsoft yet?

Edit: Oh, yeah. As LoveSpuds alludes to below, there was the whole bit about the cloud making the XB1 ten times more powerful or some such crap. OBVIOUS lie anybody with a modicum of knowledge about computing could sniff out.

[mwjw696]

@Ron_Danger Since n4rc can't reply I will try.

The reason n4rc asked why Game0N did not trust MS. Is because he wanted actual instances not defensive spin from you.

The original Kinect was crap (still better than PS4 eye) but they did not lie about it. Those just happened to be tech demo's. The lag came from the Kinect reading the motion to the input lag on the screens. Nothing was "fake" about them or the entire internet would have been all over it. You know better.

The 24 check in was called online DRM. Look it up, Ubisoft does it with every PC game. Its not some BIG conspiracy to take away your freedom like most people on N4G think it is. You people that have zero understanding are the reason why console gaming is stuck so far in the past. Harping about issues that don't affect anyone with internet, on the internet is a joke.

So as a Sony fanboy did you forget the 120fps claims, or the 1080p all PS3 games claim? Cause MS never promised anything that big, then lied. You might see deception where there is none. Try taking of the SDF glasses. Its not that bright in N4G land.

You are right about not trusting any company that large. MS, Sony, and Nintendo should all be held accountable for major lies. But at the same time you are slinging fanboy accusations at MS just because you don't like them as much as Sony.

To your last point: "Better with Kinect" Just because you don't like the device does not make you right. Its added a lot to my experience with the X1 UI, and in the games I play (BF, Ryse, DR3, ect). I do not want Kinect central games I want my games that I always play to be "Better with Kinect".

@Hicken Poor fanboys with nothing real to point at... its almost sad. So they make up things that sounds right in their heads but its wrong to anyone with common sense.

[weirdo]

cloud lol

[Stoppokingme]

Oh the cloud will be tested alright.

The question is will it hold up, many other games have buckled under the day one pressure, if it makes it through relatively unscathed then it will be justified.

Either way TF is going to be huge, I haven't seen a game hyped this much for a long time, it's not for me but at least it's going to raise sales and interest, and the XB1 needs both badly.

[LoveSpuds]

Would love to see an example of how 'The Cloud' was improving performance and graphical fidelity and all the other lies that MS perpetuated before launch.

I remember reading some very bold statements from MS about what the cloud would do for their system, ultimately they are nothing more than dedicated games servers and still people praise Spencer's honesty, call him out on this kind of stuff and see what he has to say.

[n4rc]

Seriously? Do you have any concept of what you are talking about?

Any work the cloud does is work your console doesn't have to do..

If your console was generating AI and hosting a game, do you think those resources magically don't affect performance of your game?

Quite frankly.. Not understanding something doesn't make it a lie

[LoveSpuds]

Okay, so show me an example of how the graphics and performance of any given game improves once it accesses the cloud.....go right ahead.

As it happens I work as a UA tester in IT so have a fairly good grasp of IT in general.

From the very start MS were making statements about the cloud improving graphical fidelity, improving performance and all the other tosh when the stories about its lack of power compared to the PS4 broke and I have yet to see a single example....not one!

[allastocata]

@LoveSpuds
Just because you analyze urine in an IT environment doesn't make you tech savvy. Graphical fidelity and performance are two different things. FPS can increase if certain tasks are off-loaded for another entity to process. Seems like a pretty basic concept to me... Less work for the box to compute=better performance at a given task.

[LoveSpuds]

@Allastocata

Never claimed to be any more tech savvy than the next guy, just responding to s4rc comment about whether I know what I am talking about.

Can't say I have tested urine, just multimillion pound software code - doesn't make me a hardware expert at all.

I also never stated that performance and fidelity were the same thing. These were just two of the things MS claimed would be improved by using the cloud.

I have heard that same "pretty basic concepts" as you have from MS but have yet to see ANY EVIDENCE AT ALL that this is happening - and that is my point chief, show me some evidence!

[Letros]

I bet he was happy to see Mattrick go.

[RosweeSon]

I don't wanna test clouds I wanna test consoles.

[BladerunnerZX]

Don Mattrick was the worst thing to happen to the Xbox brand since the red ring of death.
Its good that he is gone.

I think that Microsoft will eventually get the Xbox One back on track, I mean lets face it they have to.

[hollabox]

That he can do is admit to last spring/summer mistakes. MS got rid of the cancers hurting the Xbox brand, now their doing pretty good.

[mochachino]

Mattrick really messed up by focusing on Kinect and TV.

And the manner of his TV focus was soooo off, plug a cable box into another box lol

[RiPPn]

Still blaming the messaging.. smh

[Back-to-Back]

MS: Without the cloud, TitanFall would be 480p 30fps.