Tag Archives: Phil Spencer

Microsoft’s Phil Spencer has said the best-selling title during Xbox Live’s Summer of Arcade was Limbo.

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Microsoft Game Studios’ Phil Spencer has told Eurogamer the launch of Kinect will be the biggest for any one platform. “Ever.”

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Microsoft Games Studios head Phil Spencer and Xbox Japan boss Takashi Sensui will deliver TGS’s opening keynote, the show’s organiser has announced.

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Microsoft Games Studios boss Phil Spencer has told OXM the Xbox 360 exclusive from Crytek, Codename: Kingdoms, has been in development “for a while.”

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Frontier has said its feline-filled Kinectimals does not use any technology based on Lionhead’s Milo & Kate, despite comments made earlier in the week by Microsoft.

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Phil Spencer, VP of Microsoft Game Studios, has said that the tech for Milo & Kate was utilized in Kinectimals.

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GT5 goes beyond reality? Microsoft worldwide dev boss Phil Spencer laughs in the face of the fourth dimension. He has Forza 3. And Forza 3 is “the only racing sim that’s shipping this generation,” apparently.

Seriously. He said this to Gamasutra:

Gama: In this era of PS3 and Xbox 360 games, where third-parties are almost never shipping console exclusives, certainly Sony’s been very strong on, well, “our strategy, then, for differentiation is to use our first-party organization to make solid, important, AAA exclusives.” Is that how you see it, too?

PS: Absolutely. And to ship them! That’s an important part of our strategy. Look at Forza shipping next month: the definitive racing sim this generation. You could say it’s the only racing sim that’s shipping this generation.

You go, Phil. Maybe Forza 3 goes beyond super-reality. A place where the super-real ceases to be real. Hit the link before the wormhole deepens.

Microsoft’s Phil Spencer has said that one day motion control implementation in games will become the norm, just like multiplayer.

“Much like with multiplayer, I think it will become the norm,” Spencer told Kotaku. “If you are a racing game without multiplayer the game just didn’t sell.

“We think that motion control, we think voice recognition, should become a part of gaming as well.”

However, Spencer says that not all games, initially, will not get Natal support.

“Hacked in or quick to market ideas are not what we’re looking for,” he said. “We want to make sure that those experiences are world class.”

More through the link.

Microsoft’s corporate vice president, Phil Spencer, has told Joystiq that since Lionhead’s such an “innovation studio”, it would not surprise him if Natal was incorporated into Fable 3.

“You know, Lionhead’s been a real innovation studio for us,” said Spencer. “We have the release of Fable 2 episodic this week, where they’re taking Fable 2 and breaking it up into chunks, allowing people to buy the content at their pace. Fable 2, I thought, was a great release, with the orbs they added with Live, adding new functionality to the franchise.

“It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if Natal found its way into future iterations of Fable.”

Knowing Six Gun Pete the way we all do, it would only surprise the public if it didn’t, Phil.

More through the link.

After 19 years of faithful service to Microsoft, Shane Kim has decided to leave the company in order to spend more time with his family. Kim, for those just tuning in, is corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business, and one of the most prevalent “faces” of the not-actually-micro mega-company’s gaming division. He’ll be making his exit this fall, according to a report by Industry Gamers.

In Kim’s wake, Phil Spencer will be promoted to corporate vice president of Microsoft Game Studios. He was formerly its GM.

For now, Microsoft doesn’t plan on filling Kim’s vacated position in its IEB, but you can bet that Phil Spencer will be seeing even more action without Kim around to lighten the load. Fortunately, he’ll be assisted by Dennis Durkin, who’s taken up the newly created mantel of chief operating officer of Microsoft’s IEB.

Has it really been 19 years already? Best of luck, Shane. Tell the wife we said “hello.”

Microsoft’s Phil Spencer has said that Project Natal is just one of many hardware innovations underway at the Seattle giant.

Hardware, that could eventually replace or usher in a new era for the Xbox console.

“It’s not about trying to sell consumers a new piece of hardware at the wrong time, it’s about evolving the platform continuously,” he told MCV. “And we are going to find things, like Natal, that are hardware related to also do that.”

The full interview is expected to go up later, meanwhile, hit up OXM for more.

Xbox games head Phil Spencer’s defended the firm’s decision to publish a Halo RTS, saying the decision wasn’t exploitative but rather a way of introducing new consumers to the franchise.

“With Halo Wars, we thought we had an interesting story, an interesting universe, and we were trying to find ways that we could expose that world to more people, maybe people who aren’t dual-thumb capable,” he told Edge.

“It’s not as if we’re doing something like Halo Kart. That doesn’t seem to move us forward with the IP.”

Spencer went on to say that Microsoft’s approach to developing the Halo IP is a measured one.

“For us, we don’t look at how we can somehow amortize the value that we have in Halo today over as many genres as we can,” he added.

“We think we’re at a point with Halo where the future of the franchise is actually bigger than its past achievements. We’re not really just looking at exploitation. We’re trying to see if there are certain ways that the IP matches with our platform goals, and also what the customer is looking for.”

Tons more through there.

Microsoft is planning to talk about plans beyond 2009′s Christmas season at next year’s E3, MGS boss Phil Spencer has said, talking in the latest Major Nelson podcast.

“The last two E3s at least, if I use that a proxy for what’s coming, we’ve talked a lot about what its coming in the next five to six months after E3, and we’ve had some pressure that maybe we want to think a little broader about what we want to say at E3, a little further out in the future,” he said.

“I came out of an E3 planning meeting just about an hour ago, and we were looking at some of the plans for the future and things that we might want to tease, and it’s very exciting.

“There’s a lot of stuff on the docket, and maybe we’ll break the bank a little bit and talk about things that are further out, which will hopefully get the community excited.”

Xbox720omgbbqwtf.

Listen to the full thing through the link. Spencer’s section is 15:06–30:44, and his comments about E3 are right at the end.

Microsoft’s given a less than subtle hint that a sequel to Realtime World’s beloved open-city 360 shooter, Crackdown, is a little more than fantasy.

“I’m here to tell you on behalf of the community, I want – we need – another Crackdown,” Xbox Live’s director of programming, Larry Hryb, told MGS boss Phil Spencer in the latest Major Nelson podcast.

“That’s all I’m going to say, so you don’t have to confirm for deny anything. I’m just saying we want it.”

“Yes, Crackdown’s one of my favourites,” said Spencer. “I’ll leave it at that.”

A sequel to Crackdown never materialized as “the numbers just didn’t add up,” we were told by Realtime Worlds studio boss Colin Macdonald told us this summer.

Macdonald himself said at the time that the studio was open to negotiations on a second game.

“I don’t think the door’s closed,” he said. “Obviously, right now we’re tied up with APB and everything else, but hopefully in the future we’ll have the resource and something can be worked out with Microsoft.”

Crackdown, a first-party Microsoft game, shipped in February 2007 to general critical acclaim.

Microsoft Game Studios boss Phil Spencer has confirmed that Gears of War 2 is closing in on 3 million sales.

“I think they’re pushing 3 [million],” said the exec, speaking in the latest Major Nelson podcast.

“Maybe [Epic VP] Mark Rein has a more up to date number.”

The Epic shooter sold more than 2 million units in its opening weekend at the beginning of November.

Gears 2 sits beside Fable II as Microsoft’s biggest first-party games this Christmas.

Following weeks of heavy behind-the-scenes chatter regarding the fate of Lionhead and Rare, Microsoft Games Studios boss Phil Spencer has moved to praise both studios and outright deny there is a “plan” regarding Lionhead.

Trade talk erupted in the UK following the closure of Ensemble earlier this month, with insiders shocked at the move and some British studio staff predicting a policy shift on Rare and Lionhead.

“Well I’m going to drill in on that a little, but no – no plan for Lionhead,” he said when asked if the Guildford outfit was to be acted on in a similar way to Ensemble or Bungie.

“But even the Bungie games that come out as Bungie – the entity they are today – are still MGS games. We look at those as first party games.

“In terms of our investment in a game like Crackdown or Gears of War, where they’re developed by other developers – those are as important to us as games that are developed by internal studios.”

Spencer also intimated that Rare was safe, saying the studios output was “crazy.”

“The work that those studios are doing [is] incredibly important to MGS. For Rare, this will be their fifth game in the first three years of the Xbox 360 – that’s crazy. Two launch games? What studio on the planet signs up for two launch games? That’s just crazy.

“So the productivity and effort in those two studios is just great to see.”

More on GI.

Following comments made by Peter Moore to the Guardian yesterday about Rare’s lack of relevance in the modern games market, MGS boss Phil Spencer has vehemently defended the studio’s place in the Microsoft fold.

“Rare is a great studio that continuously delivers high-quality, award-winning titles for the Xbox platform and will continue to do so in the future,” Spencer told GI.

“Rare plays a strategic role in delivering games and platform experiences that will help the Xbox achieve our long-term strategy of expanding the customer base to a mainstream audience.”

The exec added:

“The studio’s current work that includes the recent release of another critically acclaimed installment in the Viva Piñata series, the reinvention of a genre and a franchise with the November release of Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts as well as the Avatar system they’re delivering as part of the new Xbox experience not only is indicative of the value they deliver to our business but proof positive to our partners and the industry at large of our commitment to this strategy and the platform’s continued success.”

More through there.

Speaking to GI, MGS head Phil Spencer’s confirmed that there’s a whole lot of Halo still yet to be revealed.

“There’s more than one team building Halo games right now,” he said. “There are more than two or three teams building Halo things right now… some of them we will own, some of them we won’t.”

Remember: it’s “exploring” they’re doing, not “exploting.”

Thanks, X3F.

MGS boss Phil Spencer reckons Xbox 360′s line-up is more than a match for PS3′s.

“Let’s start from the beginning of both consoles – PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 – which first party has had more success on their own platform? We have Gears, Halo, Forza, we’re continuing to push existing IP while bringing new IP to market. I’ll line up against Sony’s first party any day,” he told GI.

The exec also claimed he was happy to be matched to Sony’s first-party efforts this generation by any metric.

“We talk about games when we know what they are, when we can guarantee the quality to the customers, and we’ll say when they’re going to come out – I think the customers want that. But lining us up against Sony first party – I love that comparison,” he added. “Review score average, exclusive hits to-date, you pick the metric and we can talk about it.”

More through there.

GI’s got hold of the full email sent out to MGS employees from Phil Spencer detailing the Ensemble closure. Read the entire thing after the break.

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