Xbox Chief Puts Customer Trust Ahead of Beating PS4

While the Xbox One is selling better than ever, it still remains in the shadow of Sony’s PlayStation 4, but you won’t find that fact bothering Xbox chief Phil Spencer. Following a poor launch, exacerbated by lacklustre launch titles, an extortionate retail price, and an insistence on bundling the console with the much-maligned Kinect add-on, Microsoft has revised its Xbox One marketing strategy, which has seen improved sales over the last twelve months, but Spencer thinks that rebuilding customer’s faith in the Xbox brand is more important than outselling its rival.

“I started off making statements like – ‘we want to win’. But I quickly realised you can only control what you can control,” Spencer admits. “Sony is having great success with PlayStation 4 and they’ve earned that. But for me as a leader of my team and as somebody who is interacting with the Xbox community it was much more beneficial and I could have more impact by focusing on the product we had.”

“It was a change for me in the 18 months [since becoming Xbox boss]. You’ll hear me talk less about the competition. People will say ‘you’re losing, so of course you’re not going to bring that up’. Maybe we’ll test that some day,” he added. “But if we are winning I’d hope to stay in the swim lane. It’s about the games we have and how we treat the customers who buy our box.”

When asked if Xbox One will ever beat PlayStation 4, in terms of sales, Spencer replied, “You know, I don’t know. The length of the generation… [Sony] have a huge lead and they have a good product. I love the content, the games line-up that we have.”

Thank you Eurogamer for providing us with this information.