With the announcement of a major Starfield update earlier today, Bethesda's Todd Howard has been sitting down with IGN for a wide-ranging interview, and he's been asked about how he feels regarding the recent Xbox leadership changes.
Howard says he's "of two minds" about what's happened at Xbox, pointing to the retirement of Phil Spencer as something he's "sad" about, and that "he's one of the key reasons that we've been a large part of Xbox".
Nevertheless, he's also excited about "where they're going in the future with the hardware" and the arrival of Asha Sharma as Xbox boss who "everybody thinks so highly of". Here's exactly what he had to say:
"Well, look, I'm of two minds, right? I'm excited whenever there are new things and where they're going in the future with the hardware. I've known about that for a while and all the plans. I will say I'm sad to see Phil go. He's a good friend, he's one of the key reasons that we've been a large part of Xbox, not just after them acquiring us. But even before that, you could see Xbox kind of being our lead platform a lot of the time. And the one thing I really liked, I wish people knew – I've sat in so many meetings watching Phil Spencer and Matt Booty look at games and [them] wanting to protect the creative vision and find a path for success. And I've seen them do that behind closed doors so many times and I don't think they get the credit that they deserve for it. They're great game leaders and Asha's coming in and everybody thinks so highly of her. So, we're excited about the future."
It's interesting that Howard refers to having known about Xbox's hardware plans "for a while" — obviously he would be privy to that kind of information, but it's still good to know he's "excited" about what Project Helix has in store.
He doesn't really talk much about Xbox specifically beyond this, but the rest of the interview is well worth a read — he discusses the future of Starfield, a little bit about The Elder Scrolls 6, and how the future of console development seems to be less about locking down to a specific spec, and more about "widening" the scope of things.
Still not really learning much about TES 6 though... he even jokes that it shouldn't have been announced!