Phil Spencer on Xbox FTC leaks: ‘We will be better going forward’
Xbox head Phil Spencer acknowledged the substantial Xbox leaks - including plans for Xbox to buy Nintendo and a new Xbox Series X console for 2024 - from the company’s FTC filings in a post on Twitter and an internal memo The Verge obtained. He suggested in the public post and the private memo that the leaks – even the documents from the past year or so – aren’t representative of Xbox’s future plans and said the company will do better at safeguarding confidentiality in the future.
“We've seen the conversation around old emails and documents,” Spencer said on Twitter. “It is hard to see our team's work shared in this way because so much has changed and there's so much to be excited about right now, and in the future. We will share the real plans when we are ready.”
Spencer went into just a little more detail in his memo.
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“I know this is disappointing, even if many of the documents are well over a year old and our plans have evolved,” he said. “I also know we all take the confidentiality of our plans and our partners’ information very seriously. This leak obviously is not us living up to that expectation. We will learn from what happened and be better going forward.”
Spencer ended the memo on a positive note by asking Xbox workers to focus on what they could control, including the upcoming Forza Motorsport launch.
The leaked information still lines up with Xbox’s business goal since 2020. The Redmond-based company shifted focus from hardware to finding more ways to introduce consumers to the Xbox ecosystem through cloud and budget offerings and creating a reliable pipeline of first-party games on Xbox.
Bethesda’s lineup of sequels and remasters, a digital-only Series X with more storage, cloud devices, handhelds, and a 2028 Xbox that integrates PC and console features seem like a natural product of that focus, even if plans have changed.
