Xbox Boss Talks About the “Worst Game-Choice Decisions” He Has Made, Including Passing on Guitar Hero and Destiny

In an interview at PAX West, Xbox boss Phil Spencer has admitted to making bad decisions in bringing games to Xbox, as caught by Eurogamer. A key game mentioned by Spencer in the interview is Destiny, which was developed by the studio that had previously worked on one of Microsoft’s flagship gaming franchises: Halo.

In the interview, Spencer talked about not quite “getting” the gameplay of the first Destiny game, and things only really clicking for him with the release of the first Destiny expansion, House of Wolves.

“I’ve passed on some of the worst… Like, made some of the worst game-choice decisions,” Spencer went on to explain. “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 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?”

Referring to Guitar Hero in the story, Spencer then laughed about the title being quite successful back when it was released on PS2. He then spoke about how he doesn’t dwell on his mistakes and doesn’t regret these decisions.

“I’m not a regrets-type person,” he said. “Maybe that’s a fault of mine, but I passed on so many games. I could look back and say […] but no, I try to look forward and be positive about the things that we are doing..”

Earlier this year, Spencer spoke about how shutting down some of Microsoft’s first-party studios, including Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks were “hard decisions” that were made for “sustainable business”. The studios were known for developing games like Prey, Hi-Fi Rush, and The Evil Within series.

Back in June, Spencer also expressed an interest in bringing more of Xbox’s games to other platforms in light of the success seen by the multiplatform release of Sea of Thieves and Hi-Fi Rush.