Actually, he admitted more than sony having a lead, he admitted a loss. Here is the full thing, which is mostly honest if you ignore the sales pitches here and there. Also, there is the full interview and statements in video at the bottom.
Xbox chief Phil Spencer has admitted that he doesn't know whether Microsoft will be able to overtake Sony this generation, acknowledging that PS4 has a "huge lead" over Xbox One.
Asked whether Microsoft could beat Sony this gen during a panel at the 2015 GeekWire Summit, Spencer told the audience: "You know, I don't know. You know, the length of the generation... They [Sony] have a huge lead and they have a good product. I love the content, the games line-up that we have."One thing that probably I didn't realise as much as I should have when I started in this role was the impact that the launch had on our team here in Redmond, the Xbox team," he continued. "Because it's easy to read the blogs and the sites and my Twitter feed and see what the customers think of our brand and our product, but the team in Redmond took as much of a hit as the external community did around the launch. And I sit back and I think about an [organisation] of thousands of people, you're down in the organisation and some words and some actions from executives kinda just trash all the work that you've done over the last three years, many weekends and nights, and you start to question why am I doing this? Why am I working so hard when a few crass comments can actually position our product more directly than any work that the team was doing?"
Regaining confidence amongst the team was "job number one" when Spencer took over the role as head of Xbox last April, he adds, "and being very forthright with them about where we were and our ability to do things like beat Sony was critical. What I've seen in the 18 months that I've been in the role is the team is getting more work done in a day than I would expect.
"Every time I sit down and I do a product review, mostly every time, the team comes in with surprise and delight around the momentum that they have, more than I'm able to add. And when I see that transformation of a team that's questioning the leadership of the organisation to a team that's motivated by the customers that we have and their ability to delight them, I see a team that's making amazing progress. [Backwards compatibility] was one. We didn't know back compat would work. We started it. A few ninja engineers went off and figured it out, how do you go from PowerPC to X86 and translate game code that's about as time-critical as any piece of code that you would want in terms of its performance, and they got it done. So I would never question the ability of our organisation, but I'll say we're not motivated by beating Sony, we're motivated by gaining as many customers as we can."
Earlier in the interview, Spencer said that he felt Microsoft had "fundamentally lost... the trust of our most loyal customers" around the time of the Xbox One's launch.
"Whether it's always-on, used games, whatever the feature was, we lost the trust in them that they were at the centre of our decision-making process," he said. "Were we building a product for us, or were we building a product for the gamers? And as soon as that question came into people's minds and they looked at anything, whether it was the power of our box, our launch line-up, microtransactions, any of the features that you talked about, what you find is very quickly you lose the benefit of the doubt. You lose your customer's assumption that the reason you're building your product is to delight them and not just build a better and more maybe manipulative product.
"And that really set with me going through the launch and just watching the reaction, as you said, of the most loyal fans, people that had Xbox tattooed on their arm. And them coming to us almost in tears because they felt like the direction we were going with the product didn't include them. Have we recovered? I feel really good about the position and the product and the brand right now, but I was at the Gamestop Manager's Meeting about three weeks ago and I'm sitting with 5,000 Gamestop managers in Las Vegas and they'd come up and they still have customers that walk in the store that think that the Xbox One won't play used games. Just to be clear, Xbox One has always played used games from day one. But that perception that gets set early on, because consumers have five seconds to internalise your brand and your message and then they move on. They're not going to spend time to read what we say afterwards. 'Oh Xbox One, that's that thing. If I want it I'll go buy it and if I don't I won't.' Regaining that trust and the mindshare with the customer, the gamer, is incredibly difficult."
Microsoft faced major criticism from fans in the run up to the Xbox One's launch back in 2013, forcing it to reverse its decisions on online requirements and the restrictions on pre-owned games. It later took Kinect out of the box, too.
The platform holder hasn't officially updated Xbox One's sales figures in almost a year, when it revealed last November that the console had shipped almost 10 million units. Sony, meanwhile, announced in July that PS4 had sold 25.3 million units worldwide.
@butterworth: nah, nobody likes the dude who busts out any guitar but can't really play it. Then there is the generational issue. Only a few decades ago a guitar at a gathering surely led to a lot of singing from everybody. Today these kids couldn't be bothered with something unless its digital wifi pop top 40 trash...I wouldn't be surprised if they forgot how to sing or became too lazy to do so. And don't get me started on these string tappers and vocal modulation...
No, we seem to be losing several of the arts all at the same time, I would hardly call that progress.
Somebody who knows how to play pulling a guitar out though.... I think some would go for it... as long as they aren't those kids who think the whole goal of drinking is only to get drunk... sigh... they will look back one day and regret all these times they thought they knew it all.
If Tom Petty or any other name in music showed up and whipped out an acoustic, I think most might stop everything they are doing to enjoy it. But this isn't really about acoustic, I simply use both on a game that focuses primarily on rock and electric, sadly, much of the newer music these days can't hold up with a guitar alone, other instruments or fancy notework are needed to fill the lack of music.
Run optic audio when playing RS, solves most of that crackle, and some monor tuning tricks will do the rest. I play some on my electric-acustic with pssive pickups, and some on my gibson with active pick-ups. Also, run 2.1 stereo rather than surround, and be at least 10ft away from speakers. Both 8rh gen consoles suffer that odd popping, it's not the cables or the consoles, it's the code notbproperly optimized . And since this was the last title in the series, and they don't seem to have any intention of patching this, it will be on users to adjust... (bs imo...suprised somebody in Cali ain't filed suit on them yet.
@butterworth: hm....social only for the moment... when you get good you can play air guitar without the game. With Rocksmith, when you get good enough you can play actual guitar without the game which is far more impressive, helps with the ladies, and could be done socially round a bonfire with some friends and drinks...
Rockband is fun only at that moment, rocksmith gives you fun for as long as you can play...
*****you: "What personal issues? ---》 I don't have to trash another company to make myself feel better, unlike you.
I certainly wouldn't want to know you in person. You're probably that guy that got kicked out of preschool the first day after a temper tantrum."《----
Me: "For a person claiming to be neutral and such a good guy, you seem to contradict every post by making sure there is some sort of insult. And again, stop airing out your personal issues if you don’t want us all to have such an image of you."
You: "where would that be exactly? I only insult the trolls.
You however insult everyone who doesn't obey a plastic box.
******Me:---》 "the crux of the first paragraph, and the entirety of the second.《---
It's been 24 hours already, give it a rest kid."
You: "Elaborate" (which had been done....)
Because when you shifted from your being a fanboy as proven by your post history, to name calling you created a whole other line of questioning and dialogue, which was also contradictory to your statements. Do you have difficulties with the English language, or some medical issue preventing you from using short term memory?
You really are all over the place...but w/e, this has been over long ago you simply haven't come to grips with it.
Of the four sentences, which you wrote but somehow have forgotten and don't want to spend a second to read them, only one is not an insult direct or otherwise.
I'm actually shocked that you need somebody to point it out to you and I am wondering if this isn't a poor attempt to troll.
I also get the feeling "link?" or some other form of "show me proof" statements will be made by you, despite those statements being a response to proof which you regularly ignore.
Well, go ahead, plug your ears and and shake your head in another infantile response.
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