Xbox boss Phil Spencer has admitted he’s made “the worst” decisions “passing” on some of gaming’s biggest franchises over the years, including Bungie’s Destiny and Harmonix’s Guitar Hero.
In an interview called “Story Time with Phil Spencer” at PAX West over the weekend, Spencer opened up about the games that mattered most to him over the years, including Bungie’s 2014 sci-fi shooter, Destiny, in his list.
“There’s so many mixed emotions and stories for me around Destiny,” Spencer explained.
“Obviously, Bungie was part of Microsoft when I started at Xbox, and I shared a floor with Alex Seropian [and] Jason Jones in the building that we were in Redmond. I learned a ton from just being around Bungie.”
Despite his natural closeness to Bungie, Spencer admitted that Destiny “didn’t really click” when he first played it, and it took until the game’s first expansion, House of Wolves, for it to “land” him.
Consequently, Destiny went on to be published by Activision, as too was Guitar Hero, another series Spencer “passed” on, thinking it wasn’t “going to work”.
“I’ve passed on some of the worst… like, made some of the worst game-choice decisions,” he said.
“An interesting one is when this team came down to Redmond and Alex Rigopulos, 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 where you’re going to play Simon on this guitar and I’m like, really? Do we really think that’s going to work?
“I hear that turned into a pretty good game…” he added, laughing.
“I’m not a regrets-type person,” Spencer explained. “Maybe that’s a fault of mine, but I passed on so many games. I could look back and say-,” he clenches his fist, “-but no, I try to look forward and be positive about the things that we are doing.
“I just like to celebrate what the team [at Bungie] has done. I mean, it’s incredible.”
Spencer also recently addressed the surprise revelation that first-party exclusive Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will release on PS5 in spring/Q2 2025 just a few months after its Xbox debut, stating Xbox is “a business”, and that “the bar is high in terms of the delivery we have to give back” to parent company Microsoft.