Xbox Boss Phil Spencer Slams Console War Toxicity, Says Sony Isn't An Enemy

I'd say the excessive marketing to drum up demand for product the mfrs know they can't fulfill and exploitative monitization policies from most big publishers is one of the worst things about the industry at present, but otherwise I certainly agree with him.

Funny thing though is, Jim Ryan spent weeks taking low-key pot shots at XB and spreading FUD. I'm not sure the console war DMZ Phil's standing in is recognized by Jim....who is actively fanning the flames among that "core of the core" with intent.

It was enlightening and distressing to watch a console launch along side a US political election. It was so abundantly clear the same mindsets and mentalities at play "My team good, their team bad. Everything my team does is inherently for the best, everything their team does is inherently wrong and self-serving. Everything will be fine as long as my team wins." This truly is all we have amounted to in our supposedly civilized times. Factionalization across all things, be it public policy or consumer entertainment products. Pick a side, and defend the side to the death from all enemies of that side. It's the Middle Ages, but with computers. Every problem has two sides: The right one and the wrong one. And one is always on the right one!

He's completely correct, Twitter is the worse place for it as well! Then you get all these YouTubers creating daily videos slamming both console makers over every little issue or performance difference that comes along and the sheep that follow them hang on every word they say! Funny thing is most of them flip flop between which ever product is doing better than the other and everything they say is majorly hypocritical! It's a massive shame and definitely the WORSE part of the industry! At the end of the day we should be thankful for gaming no matter what system you play on, but these people don't see it that way!

I agree completely. I play games on whatever system, at the end of the day it’s the games that matter and not the box you play them on. It’s all a matter of preference which people fail to realise. With the little difference between the two consoles, it’s like saying The Beatles are better than The Rolling Stones, just personal preference.

It does make me smile that he says this after MS promoted the Xbox One as "The World's most powerful console" in every advertisement, over and over again. LOL If that wasn't a dig at Sony, I'm a monkey's uncle!

@Captain_Chao5 and it didn't end up being the most powerful. All multiplats are running better on ps5

We have to know when it's justified to critique a company and when we go too far because of brand loyalty

@Captain_Chao5 I mean, that's where console wars stem from, right? Sony and Microsoft are companies just like any other ones and as they are in the same market, they are competing over the same customers. One of the roles of a company is to be able to convince the customers why they should choose their products over the competitors', hence all these advertisements. Sony is no different:

Is this not a jab at Microsoft?

The point is that as companies compete with each other in the same market, some passionate consumers will elevate that competition to extreme heights and ultimately take things too seriously. It's not the companies' fault because they're just doing what any other company does in a competitive market.

Hi there fellow gamers. Uncle Phill is saying something that has been said before by many people, including myself.
"Console Wars" is one thing. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo, as console manufacturers, should always compete between themselves in order for us, the customers, see their platforms improve and giving us the best gaming experiences they possible can.
"Fanboy Wars" on another is entirely different. It is negative on so many levels that makes a fun and interesting conversation or debate with someoneto become a toxic and offensive dialogue that benefits no one.
We are gamers that love gaming. That´s it.
We have our own preferences and guess what?
It is perfectly fine to have them.
May we start to see a positive difference in the gaming universe that I enjoy so much.
Cheers, stay safe and happy next gen gaming to us all

@Medic_Alert That's what I said?

@LtSarge I completely agree with your point. I'm not siding with either, just laughing at the statement by Phil Spencer when both companies are guilty of fuelling the flames.

Sony fanboys are the worse..

I think people mistake competition with "enemies". Even athletes shake each others hands after an event - win or lose.

You are competing, yes, but you aren't enemies.

Yes, there are exclusives. Yes, console makers are going to promote their machines in an effort to convince you to buy their product over the others. It's called competition.

At the end of the day, though, we are still all gamers who enjoy the art of gaming - there should be civility. People aren't wrong for making the choices they made.

If you can only afford one console, then get what is right for you as an individual without bashing someone for making a different choice. Stop worrying about what other people are doing.

Modern gaming is the worst when it comes to competitiveness, because it's not like you are sitting face-to-face with people.

In the days before the internet, there was playground banter, but it was all in good fun - lest you get a good punch in the jaw for being an [expletive].

Always been a playstation gamer 1st and foremost, but I’ll buy and support whatever offers quality and value such as the 360 and now the series X along side a PlayStation.

Diehard fans of either and the PC master crowd do tick me off though lol, I find it crazy how some can be so loyal to a brand that just wants your money. I do enjoy a bit of banter sometimes too though with them.

@LiterallyDoNotCare To be fair, in terms of compute power the statement is true, it is more powerful. How easy or difficult utilizing that power is at the current state of maturity of devkits or developer target priorities is another matter and appears to affect results.... It's obvious the launch multiplats aren't very threaded and are more or less ignoring much of the available headroom. But the headroom exists. Whether it will ever be well utilized outside first party depends on how much the same architecture is used by PC. If they share a lot of the same optimization architecture, it will benefit for games that weren't started in development before X1X released.... If not...PS5 will get the advantage based on faster clocks on fewer cores.

He talks rubbish. Sony are evil and he knows it.

@GamingFan4Lyf It seems to be human nature across many things now, not just gaming. But the weird thing is while that was human nature hundreds of years ago, we'd seemed to have moved beyond it. We've moved backward, back to the days of the Crusades and absolutism. The default thinking on everything seems to be that there is only one "best" of anything, and therefore nothing except the one true measurable "best" has any point of existing. That goes for product, brands, genres, and even people. It seems tied to internet culture, but also to the "data driven" everything. If everything is measurable and quantifiable, and can be reduced to a number, then you can simply measure the "best" of all options, numerically, and therefore only that option needs to exist, because there's no purpose in an inferior version existing. People, employees, students...everything is distilled to a numeric ranking, and only the best need exist.

I'm convinced, were it conceived today, the USSR would be universally determined by the internet to be the ideal society, and prove it in numbers on a graph.

The meaning of life truly has become "42".

In Phil we trust. 👍🏻

This was taken from a podcast called 'Decoder' by vox media it's on all streaming platforms.

Runs for about a hour and a great listen

@Bmartin001 fanboys in general are the worst no matter which "team" they're on.

@AJDarkstar It really is. I mean I get why they do it, to a point. The idea of the "impossible to find, most wanted item!" has been a marketing staple for a long time. From Cabbage Patch to Tomagachi to consoles it's tried & true. The idea that an item is so in demand and there are shortages make them that much more desirable. The first 2 months of being impossible to get makes people feel they're absolute must-have without delay items for the next 7 years. EVERYONE must have one, simply because nobody can get one and "everyone" wants one.

Nintendo's the master of exploiting that. But it's kind of crossed a line of stupid. It's one thing to have excess demand to fuel desire after demand is met. But they've gone into a level well beyond that now. The hallmark of that was the Jim Ryan interview, where he was atypically candid in saying he spent the last year generating demand and now can shift to focusing on supply. He's not alone, MS did it too, but the idea of spending a full year putting all your effort and money into maximizing demand for a product to absolutely stratospheric levels only to get to production and say you can meet like 5% of that demand that was effectively artificially generated to begin with......wouldn't it have made more sense to soft-launch them in the off-season and try to ramp production capacity up to meet mainstream demand once the marking really gets going? Get the launch out to the early adopters in a more controlled fashion before going into Wii hysteria? I realize they started pushing them before the pandemic boosted demand further than they expected, but even with no pandemic the situation would have been little different.

They're making a mess of the short term to try to guarantee long-term demand, and to satisfy investors by showing they have an off-the charts in-demand consumer product with no ceiling. But it's just so excessive now that it's almost self defeating. They've now generated a massive black market, trafficking network, and criminal enterprise that, ironically, directly hurts them. The consoles are sold at a loss, and each scalper sale means they're deferring converting that sale into profit through software sales and subs. That actually will hurt the quarterlies - which is one thing they do care about.

Honestly the whole toxic console war thing is something that I only see from the hardcore Playstation fanbase. PC fans will occasionally do it as well, but the PS fans are always by far the most toxic in gaming communities. They are always the type who feel some inexplicable need to hate on everything that isn't a PS exclusive while acting like PS exclusives are the only thing that anybody should ever have any interest in playing. I really don't get it, but then again I am not some rabid fanboy.

@JayJ I think it mostly follows whatever the most popular thing is. Right now it's absolutely the PS core that's the worst fanboys. Sony's best, everything else is worst, anything that Sony does or favors PS is great, anything that favors something over PS is horrible stupid nobody ever bought Skyrim anyway gAmEPaSs is taeking the gaems!!

But.....the Nintendo fanbase can be almost as ugly. Yelling "GameFreak!" in a crowded Smash room is taking your life into your hands.

XB is chill...because nobody owns an XB1 except the loyal fans that prefer value to popularity. That'll change in the coming years with Series. But if you were there for the 360....XB was the toxic fanbase and PS3 was pretty chill. Those are the people that became the PS4 fanbase.

But yeah, for the past 7 years, anyway, I do agree with you. If XS becomes the popular one, though, we may have to hang out on PS primarily to get away from the toxicity here

@LiterallyDoNotCare

I honestly don't understand why is so hard to grasp that the XsX is indeed the most powerful console on the market. MS clearly has problems with the development tools at the moment ( which will be addressed) but the fact remains true, XsX is more powerful than the PS5. Quite simple, really.

@Sol4ris Tools is a made up argument induced by damage controlling fanboys.
It could be a 360 ps3 situation, where xsx will never run games better.

Either way, buying a console to run games 5% better is dumb imo.

@NEStalgia what a terrible point

there is no chill community. There is no preference value over popularity. People want games and sony supports all countries. If anything. The hardcore xbox guys are narrow westernized community.

@LiterallyDoNotCare Well if we're talking global market share, which we're not, then yes Sony is available in countries XBox is not. But that has no bearing on the nature of the community being chill in nature at the current point in time, or the fact that it wasn't very chill in the 360 era. I'm not sure "Westernized" is a relevant data point starting with PS5 though. It's as Western, if not more Western than XBox now. Nintendo is the lone outlier for a non-Western perspective now.

@AJDarkstar Probably, but I imagine the companies are too afraid to move beyond that short-supply generated demand just in case it helps. Starting especially with Wii, there is that mystique around being the product everyone wants that nobody can get. It drives up desirability at least in the mid-term. This holiday is supply constrained. The next two holidays demand will probably be boosted because "it was impossible to get one last year!" By year 4 it doesn't matter anymore, probably. But it's like nuclear escalation...who wants to be the one to take their hand off the button first?

And remember the drug dealers publishers and console venders use a new generation to literally reach a new generation of non-gamers turning tweens and teens to saturate them as the only console they know and establish nostalgia of youth in the future. The hype helps drive those kids to want the product, not this year, but future years.

I agree, long term, I doubt it helps much. But look at how Nintendo uses that technique, all the way down to time limited digital software launches now.

@NEStalgia Ps is not more westernized than xbox.
Xbox guys always buy games from american studios, with a few european exceptions. People want ms to buy japanese studios but that's a death sentence to those studios because xbox guys don't like variety. I know some people clamour xbox games studios genre diversity (which most of those genres don't sell), but the masses don't care about the diversity. They want rpgs and shooters and xbox really needs to hurry up. If the sale ratio is like 5:1 by the end of 2021, it's over for the consoles. All xbox said was they told more than 1m because they outsold xbox 1. That tells me it's a less than. MS needs to report those numbers. I ain't buying a console if idk if it's successful and future proof. So yes, being a western/american brand doesn't help.

Again. Stop generalizi g that the leading platform is not a chill community.

@LiterallyDoNotCare I mean the two biggest games on the XSX right now are from a French publisher, and the biggest 1st party franchises, Forza Horizon, the Fable reboot, Sea of Thieves all are from UK subsidiaries of MS, so I'm not really sure what the whole "American studios" thing is about. And all of those countries are "the West." If you're looking at Asia, Africa, and the Middle-East, then we have a different equation as XBox is not available in many countries there. But make no mistake, Sony has pivoted fully to a Western focus, and is looking inward, while MS is actively looking outward. Again, most average view from here is they're both Western consoles. Nintendo has a truly worldwide, or Eastern focused console.

The whole point of this entire thread is a focus on generalized community atmospheres. As a participant in all 3, there's simply no mistaking the mood of the current PS and XB communities. There are well reasoned, people within each of them, but the overarching mood of the PS community as a whole right now is an echo over the overarching mood of the 360 community in its day.

@AJDarkstar Regarding Toxic fans-

You assume all Gamepass subs are from Xbox console owners. There are people within the PS community that didn’t realize PSNow allows downloads; I can’t imagine how someone who doesn’t even own the console would know better. Gamepass has a subscriber base of 15 mil, and there are only 40 mil XB1s. Those subs have come from both console and PC. Ergo the same logic of toxicity based on popularity applies. However, of course there bad fans no matter where and when as well. But where ever there is a perceived “winning team” there will be $5!7 talkers. It is the sad nature of some human beings.

I’m happy they handed the reins to Phil, IMO he brought them back from a disastrous 2013. Of course there have been things both companies have done over the years that have been irritating, but the fun and enjoyment I’ve had on both companies consoles has far outweighed it. I’m happy with both my Series X and PS5 digital and also hate the fanboy crap. Competition is great, I wish them both continued success.

@LiterallyDoNotCare

Development tools are "a thing" and play an incredibly important part in maximising the potential of a console. Sony is clearly leading with the PS5, while MS's is still working out theirs and it entirely no one's fault but their own. I genuinely believe that the XsX will start to outperform the PS5 once the kinks are ironed out , so to speak.

@Sol4ris Sure. It really isn't important. It's important for xbox guys tho. Neither Nintendo or PS care so much about this.

@NEStalgia The communities haven't changed. You are too focused on vocal minority.

Sony needs to focus on usa because that's where xbox sells. If they dominate that, they take out xbox as a console maker.

and trust me. Whatever Phil says, he wants both other companies to disappear.

@Kefka2589 I agree completely with what Phil is saying. Regarding your comment about pushsquare. That’s exactly what happened to me on purexbox. I don’t think one side is worser then the other. Both are equally bad. Gaming should bring everyone together, the more games/experiences the better for everyone. I was always a ps guy, but the one s was my 1st Xbox console & I absolutely love it. Gears is up there as one of my most favourite franchises & backwards compatibility has been amazing for me. Especially being able to play some Xbox 360 gems. There a few fanboys on here, who I have noticed have not commented on the article. Anyway, whatever you play on, enjoy it, life’s to short to be fighting over plastic boxes.

@LiterallyDoNotCare True that vocal minorities spoil the milk for everyone... But the vocal minority is a whole lot louder and more toxic, currently among the ps base presently which skews the mood of the community at large negatively.

That's not the perspective of an outsider gauging some other fan base. I'm part of all 3 console communities. It was pc master race once upon a time, too. Currently the only community that ever feels embarrassing to be part of is ps. Nintendo.. Yeah any time pokesmash comes up that's an embarrassment too.

If course it's not that all of the ps community is that way. Heck that would be self incriminating if true; but the part that is is so deep into it is really off putting. Not everyone that participates in PlayStation fandom is toxic, but it seems most people that are toxic choose the PlayStation community to participate in. But I'm fully prepared for that toxicity to repopulate the xb community this gen, as it's popularity is sure to grow.

@Kefka2589 Yeah, that's it exactly. It's actually mellowed a little with ps5 for now. But i still feel like one has to tread carefully there to avoid wars. Well, there's no feels like about it. Even the staff gets ripped a new one for any article that's anything but effusive praise. That's something I've not seen on nl or pxb for sure. People go after Damien on nl but that's for click bait journalism, not for being anti-console-vendor.

I think the problem is that 20 years ago the console war trolls would have had to handwrite letters to a publisher. You would not even know they exist. They would never be published, They would be isolated and alone and surrounded by more moderate publishable opinions that would pull them back to the center. Now anyone can write and controversy and extreme opinions get ad revenue. So here we are.

I'm a bit of a head case and buy all the systems at (or near) launch. While I might lean Xbox, I'm not about to miss the occasional Sony first-party gem here and there out of console allegiance, but holy s**t are people obsessed with this garbage.

Also, agree with @koffing above that the publisher-fueled tripe I read on a daily basis is neither constructive or even entertaining anymore. The sheer number of YouTube videos with OMGGASPCONTROVERY style headlines has annoyed me to the point where I'm questioning why I subscribe to YouTube premium, and these endless Digital Foundry videos about 2-3 fps differences just make it all that much worse. I couldn't care less who "wins" the whole thing - though I suspect the only REAL winner is PC gaming.

Maybe at one time there was something to the whole "console wars" thing. Not a lot, but something. Microsoft vs. Sony though is just two monolithic corporations with virtually identical products. Go on and choose the console that appeals more to you, but actually taking sides is beyond silly.

@AJDarkstar sure. And how many Nintendo fans act like Pokémon was the first monster capture game? I mean it’s this weird thing when stuff gets popular you know ?

@Kefka2589 OMG, yeah, that article...the comments....that was a hideous mess. I actually avoided PS for years. I'm mostly an NL regular, (though I've been recently hanging out on PS and PXB more just because it's launch time and not much is going on in Nintendoland), and a few regulars kept prodding me to go over there. I avoided it like the plague. It was a nightmare in there. But with the launch I finally did it. It was after that article though. I did read it...and follow it....that was ugly.

I've been impressed lately, the staff articles, and overall tone have become pretty solid these days, and I have big respect for that cleanup. But they need to clean house along with the cleanup...that community...sigh

@mousieone Or the endless complaints that Pokemon didn't age with them and become complicated. As though a game who's actual purpose was basically to be a kid-ified SMT was supposed to just become actual SMT.

Pretty sure Bifrons is not getting a parade balloon any time soon...

@NEStalgia Now I want a Jack Frost Balloon :/

Honestly, the issue I have is that game is getting easier. Nexomon was nice because it was a challenge and brought me back to Gen 5. o.o

@Kefka2589 SMT what? Lol.

@NEStalgia ignore Jim Ryan he is a total bell. I love the PlayStation brand but I hate everything about him. He's a backtracking toxic MF and I hate the ideas he brings with him. It is people like him that will see an amazing game and saturate it for everything it is worth rather than promote creativity within PlayStation studios.

Sony had some new approaches with PS4 that brought some creative genius to the table. Now MS are doing the same with their developers and its stuff like this that I love. Let the creators be creative! 😀

I love this from Uncle Phil and it is exactly how I feel. I'm not here to play console I'm here to play games wherever they may be!

@Bmartin001 no, fanboys are the worst.

@DuffmanSeriesX

I completely agree about the YouTube crowd. Like you said, most of them flip flop to whatever is most popular & bash the competition just to get views, so they can sit on their @$& and make money.

I have a few select YouTubers I watch for Xbox info, but they all have PlayStations too. I had two others that I used to watch & they flip flopped to PlayStation & now bash Xbox constantly. 🙄

@Bmartin001

I agree that Sony fanboys are the worst.

However, most of those trolls owned a 360 and made that fanbase toxic, as well. These people just buy the most “popular” system & rip on the other one because they have nothing better to do in their lives.

That’s why you see a lot of PlayStation trolls here on PXB. They owned a 360 and now that Xbox is doing better again, they want to be involved in talking about this ecosystem again. But they don’t like anyone criticizing their precious PS4/PS5.

Edit - spelling errors.

Despite reading a book written by the founder of Sony Akio Morita about 20 years ago. I would never buy anything from Sony because of their bad reputation. Bill Gates on the other hand was a true genius and advanced the English language.

@AJDarkstar Sure. However, I think people need to not be so vocally protective over material things anyway. But here we are :/

@Kefka2589 sorry was being sarcastic. I’m familiar with SMT. I’ll make my joke more clear next time. =D

@Alpha_Pulse Absolutely. I said here to someone the other day that as an XBox fan, I can't stand Jim Ryan, and as a Playstation fan, I can stand Jim Ryan even less. He's Playstation's very own Don Matrick, and while he's certainly not killing sales to the brand today, I'm certain his decisions will have a long, slow negative effect on it, much like how Matrick's harm to XBox really began years before the 2013 E3 meltdown. That was the culmination of years of behind the scenes catastrophic decisions. Such is the same. What Jim's messing up now will really show up at the PS6's launch.

PS fans keep defending him based on the great games, etc. But what they're not factoring in is that all the games coming out now are the fruit of the labor of the old leadership (Hirai, Layden, House, Tretton, Yoshida, etc.) We won't see what the catalogue fostered by Ryan looks like for another year or two. He's seemed to actively jettison most of their philosophies. I expect his catalog is an EA/Activision/2k like catalog. Endless sequels, mtx, and lack of new IP.

Phil has a Switch and Playstation. Larry Hryb plays Switch. Shu Yoshida has Xboxes (preordered XSX) and 2 Switches (and 2 WiiU's). Satoru Iwata had Playstations (not sure he had XBoxes. Reggie does.) Shun Furukawa at least has a Switch, though he's not much of a player he at least dabbles and is at minimum a "DS casual." I've not seen any evidence Ryan even has a Playstation beyond an office unit for work purposes. It's hard to understand a market if you're not even participating in it. He strikes me as a guy that was brought up through Sony Pictures as a media executive and landed in Playstation by drawing straws. He's a more typical western publisher executive. Bobby Kottick, Andrew Wilson, etc. Not even Yves Guillemot....his company may be a mess right now, but he's an old school game dev himself and demonstrates a lot of passion for games, even if he's terrible at controlling the process around him.

@NEStalgia 100%.

I loved Yoshida and the best part about him taking the stage is he would talk "to" you and not "at" you like Jim Ryan. Don't get me wrong the guy is probably an intelligent businessman and might be nice outside of Sony but he is the wrong man for taking the stage and taking about games.

@Alpha_Pulse Heck, Ryan doesn't even have the decency to talk "at" us. He kind of talks to investors "through" us like a prism to focus the message directed at them!

@NEStalgia hahaha yeah thats actually a more accurate description 🤣

@Kefka2589 @mousieone After reading all the Golden Joystick article responses on NL and PS, I think I'm going to have to go ahead and add TLoU's fanbase to the toxicity report. Sure, they may have been under blanket coverage from the Sony group, but, like PokeSmashDertalesBorne, it deserves it's own travel advisory.