Following the mass Xbox layoffs (3,200 employees to be cut by July 2027, not to mention all the codev partners and vendors), developers and analysts started looking into what happened for the division to reach such a low point, and the failure of Game Pass came up in most conversations, especially when a new report revealed that the subscriber base actually decreased from 34 to 30 million. Moon Studios CEO Thomas Mahler, for instance, opined that they never delivered the big hits a subscription service would need. Anyway, the big question mark now is pertaining to the future of Game […]

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Following the umpteenth destructive wave of layoffs at Xbox, which this time also led to four (possibly five) studio divestitures and thousands more job cuts at historic studios like Bethesda, Obsidian, and id, it has become abundantly clear that the whole strategy centered on Game Pass was flawed. Xbox head Phil Spencer, with the blessing of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, explicitly sought to replicate Netflix's subscription service boom in gaming. However, the reality is that the two forms of entertainment couldn't be more different: games are generally much longer than TV series, for starters. Moreover, unlike TV shows or movies, they […]

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The retirement of Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer was quite unexpected. The 58-year-old executive had just presented the Xbox Developer Direct in January, save for an older rumor that was, however, quickly dismissed by Microsoft as nonsense. Phil Spencer, who received the D.I.C.E. Lifetime Achievement Award in 2022 for his contribution to the industry, worked at Microsoft for 38 years. After starting on projects like the digital encyclopedia Encarta, he joined the Xbox team as general manager of Microsoft Game Studios EMEA. Later, he was promoted to GM of the entire Microsoft Game Studios division and, eventually, as executive VP […]

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Players have had a lot to say about Phil Spencer over the years. You don't have to look very hard to find positive or negative comments on Spencer and his tenure at Microsoft and Xbox, and that's probably not going to stop now that he has officially retired as of this past Monday, February 23, 2026. However, we don't often hear from other major industry figures speaking about leaders like Spencer, and a new GamesIndustry.Biz report includes a slew of the video game industry's current and former leaders all commemorating Phil Spencer as he enters retirement after a combined 38 […]

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This past Friday, the video games industry, and more specifically, Xbox and Microsoft, entered a new era. A post-Phil Spencer and Sarah Bond era, with the announcement of Spencer's retirement and Bond's resignation. Former Microsoft CoreAI chief executive officer, Asha Sharma, took Spencer's place, while Matt Booty stepped into a new role as Xbox's chief content officer. As the industry and consumers wrap their heads around the sudden shake-up, a new report from The Verge looks to provide some insight into why it happened the way it did. Why is Sarah Bond leaving Microsoft instead of being the one to […]

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Update 21/02/2026: Following the publication of this article, former Xbox president Sarah Bond has shared her statement she sent internally within Xbox and Microsoft on her personal LinkedIn account. Notably, she mentions that her decision to step away comes at a time when she feels she has completed the commitment she made four years ago to help lead Xbox through the post-Activision Blizzard acquisition transition. "When we announced our intention to acquire Activision Blizzard in 2022, I committed to helping lead Xbox through what would be a critical period of change," Bond writes. "Over the past four years, we’ve navigated […]

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