Xbox boss Phil Spencer has admitted he’s perhaps not the best judge of what games will be successful, saying he passed over the chance to publish both Destiny and Guitar Hero in the past.
Eurogamer spotted an interview with Spencer at video game convention PAX West in which he said he initially got the wrong impression of Destiny despite Microsoft having such close connections to its developer Bungle, creator of the flagship Xbox franchise Halo.
“I have to be honest, when Destiny 1 came out, and I might have played some of the preview builds that we were doing on Xbox, it didn’t really click with me,” Spencer said. “I’m not a big PvP player. You can see my player history; it’s not a lot of what I do. And I was a little worried I was going to get thrown into a PvP world, and it turns out that’s not what it was at all.”
Destiny arrived in 2014 from publisher Activision (which ironically is now owned by Microsoft but no longer the publisher of Destiny) and became a huge hit, selling more than six million copies in a month and spawning multiple expansions.
Destiny 2 arrived in 2017 and is still being supported today (though not without complications), now under the PlayStation umbrella after Sony bought Bungie in 2022.
“The thing about Destiny that I start with is just my history with Bungie, and their evolution of working on games,” Spencer continued. “I do love that it’s a local team. I have a lot of friends over there still and yes they’re owned by the other guy now but it’s a game that I’ll always love and a team that I’ll always have a ton of affinity for.”
When asked if it wasn’t at all frustrating that he passed on Bungie, Spencer said it wasn’t even the only time something of this scale had happened.
“I’ve got so many of those,” he said. “I’ve passed on some of the… I’ve made some of the worst game choice decisions.
“An interesting one: When this team came down to Redmond, [former Harmonix CEO] Alex Rigopulos who’s great, love Alex, and he pitches a game where they’re actually going to make plastic guitars and they’re going to plug into consoles and then they’re going to sell tracks,” Spencer continued, explaining how he passed on Guitar Hero.
“I’m like: ‘Really? Do we really think that’s going to work?’ A few people played Guitar Hero. I hear that turned into a pretty good game.
“I’m not a regrets type person, maybe that’s a fault of mine, but I passed on so many games that I could look back and…” he shook his fist. “But no I try to look forward and be positive about the things that we are doing. And so with Destiny I just like to celebrate what the team has done.”
Both Destiny games and the collection of Guitar Hero titles all came to multiple platforms, so Xbox was at least able to revel in their success somewhat, but in a complete turnaround, Spencer is now allowing what could be Xbox exclusives to come to rival platforms.
This began earlier in 2024 when Xbox announced Pentiment and Grounded were coming to Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 5, and the latter later gained former exclusives Hi-Fi Rush and Sea of Thieves. Making clear this practice could also apply to major new releases, Xbox recently announced Indiana Jones and the Great Circle would come to PS5 after its launch on Xbox.
Image Credit: Franziska Krug/Getty Images for game Verband der deutschen Games-Branche
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
