Seamus Blackley, known for his contributions in co-founding and designing the original Xbox, believes that Phil Spencer ended up exhausting himself in his attempts to “manage the beast” of Microsoft’s upper management. In an interview with Games Beat, Blackley also noted feeling bad for former Xbox president Sarah Bond’s situation.
“The person who I feel worst for is Sarah Bond, who was more than capable from a leadership standpoint,” he said as part of a larger discussion about the new leadership at Xbox. “Super cool, actual gamer. I really like Sarah Bond. This is a crappy day for her. I just want to tell her that I’m thinking of her and that she’s awesome.”
As for Spencer—the now-retired former CEO of Microsoft Gaming—Blackley noted that former CoreAI executive Asha Sharma taking over his position “isn’t an insurgency”.
“This is kind of like, ‘We’re hoping that the new person who’s been put in charge of our department, who doesn’t have any background in what we do, will not f*** with us too much and will let us do the right thing.’ The game that Phil had been playing for a long time, managing the beast so that he could continue to try to do the right thing for games, I think that finally just wore him out. It’s really hard to do that.”
Discussing the mix of people that would ultimately make Xbox possible, Blackley went into the kind of balance that was provided by a mix of engineers, artists, and executives. Noting that he was joined by Ed Fries, J Allard, Robbie Bach, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer at the time, Blackley spoke about needing team members that are “pure somehow” while also having to “give away some of that purity” to get the necessary funding and corporate support.
“The balance is what enables something to happen, but you need to have an idea that people drive through that remains pure somehow,” he said. “The balance enables it. We needed the money. We needed somebody to back it. We needed the credibility of Microsoft. We had to give away enough of that purity so that the people who had the money to make it happen would let it happen, without giving away too much.”
“The question is really, if me at that age, if I had just been given the money to do it, it would have probably failed, because I would not have had enough adult supervision for it to go. Did I like the adult supervision? No. But to say that the people who were trying to block a project are responsible for it succeeding is bulls***. People on that list tried to block it, and then later claimed to be in support of it. Even you yourself were fooled by some of these people, I will tell you, in retrospect.”
Blackley has also spoken about Sharma’s new role as head of Microsoft Gaming, and how this might end up with the company slowly sunsetting the entire division over time. As for Bond, check out her thoughts on her resignation, and how it was time for her to take the next step.
