Microsofts Phil Spencer on launching the new Xbox

The holiday season is always huge for gaming, but this year, it’s even bigger: a new console generation has arrived with Microsoft’s new Xbox Series X / S and the Sony PS5, and gaming itself has gotten even more enmeshed in mainstream culture during the pandemic. It also feels like we’ve reached an inflection point for game streaming: Google, Amazon, and Microsoft all have services that allow you to play games on any device by streaming them over the internet — a plan that has led to controversy and conflict with Apple, which has put up roadblocks for these services in the iOS App Store.

On this week’s episode of Decoder with Nilay Patel, I interviewed Phil Spencer, the executive vice president of gaming at Microsoft — or, more simply,...

Continue reading…