Phil Spencer Internal Comms Leak, In Which He Only Addresses To Most Fringey Conspiracy Theory

And here we go again. I have spent some time pointing out that the Xbox team has demonstrated an unfortunate inability to properly communicate both internally and externally about its various plans. Whether it comes to how it’s going to handle exclusives, game ports, or just the overall direction of the division’s plans, what comes out of the team at Microsoft is often a confusing, vague, jumbled mess that serves only to free everyone to speculate away as to what is actually going to happen. This came to a head recently, with rampant speculation primarily that Microsoft was going to port a number of high profile first-party games to other consoles, and a secondary and more fringe theory that Microsoft was going to get out of the console making business entirely.

Well, Xbox chief Phil Spencer has apparently held an internal open meeting with his team to answer, well, I guess only the fringiest of the speculation. We’ll start with what was actually addressed.

A recent story from reporter Shannon Liao alleges Spencer held an internal town hall meeting with Xbox employees on February 6, following the weekend reports of Xbox porting games to PS5. In that meeting, he reportedly said the company has no plans to stop making consoles and that Xboxes would continue to be a part of the company’s strategy alongside other devices.

This part is easy. I can’t believe any serious person actually ever thought that Microsoft was going to pivot away from its console business entirely. It is true that Sony is kicking Microsoft’s butt overall in the console market. Reports have Sony moving roughly three times the units compared with the Xbox. But selling 7.6 million Xbox units is nothing to sneeze at and it would be baffling to see the company simply walk out of the market entirely.

Which is what makes it so frustrating that Spencer only addressed that rumor and completely ignored the question about game ports.

Interestingly, Liao also reported on X/Twitter that Spencer did not confirm nor deny rumors that Starfield would go to other consoles, even though this meeting took place after those reports cropped up.

Later this week, we will likely find out if any of these rumors and reports of Xbox exclusives coming to other platforms are true. On February 5, the day before the reported town hall meeting, Spencer announced that a “business update event” about the future of Xbox was coming soon and that he would be sharing more details then. Until that time, the Xbox faithful will just have to hold on a little bit longer.

They’re not going to “hold on” at all, as we’ve already seen. They’re going to speculate, theorize, and otherwise fill the information void that Xbox has left in its wake. Sure, we may have answers this week, still. Maybe. Hell, with the Xbox team, you never know.

But leaving the public to generate its own theories will also virtually guarantee that whatever the news Spencer will finally release in his event will piss off or disappoint some percentage of the public that had settled on some theory that won’t come to be.

In other words, this is just not how you handle communicating to either your internal team, nor your customers.