Phil Spencer Says He Rejects The Traditional Notion Of Console Wars

Online console warring is one of the essences of the gaming community. Whether that’s a good or bad thing is up for debate, I guess, but it’s hard to deny there’s not a lot of strong feelings there one way or another. For instance, this article will undoubtedly get more responses, glowingly positive and intensely negative with little in-between, and more traffic than a lot of others we post today. It’s just part of the beast, for better or worse. One person who looks at it from a different point of view is Xbox’s Head, Phil Spencer, who seems to want to reject the idea of the ‘console wars’ as we usually define them.

In speaking with Gamespot, Spencer still acknowledged that there was a competition there on some levels, such as technologically, but the idea of companies as bitter enemies is one he thinks is outdated. He talks about how at E3 all the companies come together for the overall business of the industry. He basically says that business isn’t sport, where you’re constantly trying to pummel the other guy into submission, and has come together in a much more cohesive way than they once did.

“The nice thing about E3 is it is a time when all of us sit around a board meeting,” Spencer noted. “EA is there. Take-Two is there. Sony is there. Nintendo is there. I think there are 30 board members from all the major [publishers]… Epic is there. We’re talking about how we make this show a better show for everyone. Any time you can–and we’re all focused on it–you can create common focus areas for us as a games industry, where we can hopefully make some progress, as we have over the years, I think it leads to the idea that it makes sense for us in certain instances to cooperate on different things.”

It’s an interesting take on things, and one from someone who has become ingrained in the business. Under Spencer’s tenure, the Xbox division has become far more open than it once was with first party titles coming to the PC, and even to the Switch. Of course, that won’t stop certain people from reading this as Spencer waving the white flag in lieu of a console generation that Sony dominated with Nintendo is speeding to the number two spot. Oh well, some things never change.