Part of the transcript from the Larry & Phil podcast chat -
Larry Hyrb: What's next, yeah.
Phil Spencer: And what I loved about 2018 and you know this, and it's not something we've talked about in the press a ton. But this time last year we did a really big reorg.
Larry Hyrb: Right.
Phil Spencer: Where we brought in a couple new leaders, 'cause we had a real good vision on where we wanted to go. At least we had solidified that.
Larry Hyrb: Came up with the idea and now you have to put everybody in place to execute that plan.
Phil Spencer: That's exactly right. And I would say what I love the most about 2018 is I feel like we have ... We got the right teams together. And I mean that, teams in kind of a plural. Some of those were added, as you said. Six new studios, adding the seventh at The Initiative and they're doing a great job hiring. And I think now we're execution mode. Like I look at 2019 and where we're going with future consoles, all this xCloud coming to PC in a much bigger way this year. Doing some things we had been talking about for a while for real on PC this year. And this is a year where it's not strategery, it's we're gonna roll up our sleeves and show. And I love that. I love the studio acquisitions as a part of that. I love the team as it's set up right now, and our leadership team. And how they're showing up the different leaders, some new, some that have been around for a long time. I think everybody sees it now that this is the year, okay, it's going to be ... This is ... Now it's go time.
Larry Hyrb: But I also want to point out, is that when you talked about the studio specifically. Some of them are going to have some stuff this year, and some of them like The Initiative won't have it for a little while.
Phil Spencer: That's right, that's right.
Larry Hyrb: So it's not like we're going to have all 12 studios, "Here's all the new stuff you're going to see." It's rolling, that's just the way it works.
Phil Spencer: Yeah, the real goal with the studios for me is to get a large enough studio base where we can delight and surprise ourselves and our fans with games. And it's on a regular cadence. So we're not always pinched to say, "Okay, well what can we announce?" Now we can say "What do we have to announce, and which of these things do we actually want to announce? And what do we want to let sit and percolate a little longer?" You know this, it's been a while since we were in that position with our internal studios. And I feel really good about that. As Matt Booty and I were sitting down and looking at all the different things the teams are working on, it's just ... The kind of capability that we have now as a first party organization, I do think it will continue to get bigger. But the ... What we have right now is just so different than the position we've been in the last five years.
Phil Spencer: It is. And yeah, the collection of things that the teams ... That the studios that have come together. I was out at Rare at the same time, we went to Rare, Playground. Saw what Playground's working on next. I saw what Rare is working on next and their continued growth and success with Sea of Thieves.
Phil Spencer: And that feedback loop ... I mean I guess we could've sat back in beta for nine months or whatever, I'm not sure what that would've meant. But we said even before we launched that the gamer's voice is going to play a big role in how we grow this game. And that's not done. And we look at where this is going. Some of the stuff announced, some of the stuff unannounced. I think it's something that's long for us. We're big believers in the Sea of Thieves and where it's gonna go, and it's great to see Joe and the team continue to innovate there.
Phil Spencer: Yeah, you know this is going to be a fun E3 for us. We ... Obviously there was some news about E3 in the fall and we had a discussion internally of, "Should we go big? Should we save some money?" You know, what does that mean? We decided, no, we're going to do our thing. And we're gonna go and be as big at E3 as we've ever been and I love that opportunity. I love the opportunity to be with our fans in the industry. And the industry conversations it's like a revolving door in Sarah Bond's team who runs business development for us.
Phil Spencer: And this year we're changing up a couple, as you know, things about how we're showing up at E3 I think again in a positive way.
Phil Spencer: And I'm looking forward to this year. I'm thinking ... Interesting on how and who we get on stage and how we kinda do that this year. And then I think it's gonna be great. There's ... I think we're still going through some of the internal discussions about how much long term versus how much near term do we talk about. You know me, I'm always more of a proponent for just being as transparent as we can be. That said, you know, if things could change or something you don't want to head-fake people and say we're doing X and we're doing Y, but I feel really good about our plans and we'll kind of work through those things. With the larger organization.
Phil Spencer: But I think it's going to be ... I think the content that we'll have will be great. I think we'll talk about our future. I think we'll talk more about what the Xbox brand means to us. I think rightfully, most people when they think about an Xbox they think about a gaming console. We do as well. And I love the fact that the gaming console has played such an important role in our strategy, but at the same time we have millions of Xbox customers who we never see on console today.
Phil Spencer: Wherever you are. And we want to continue to make that possible. You can stay connected to your friends, you can stay connected to your content. One thing I'm doing, which I had a good time with when I was away over the holidays. I was playing games on xCloud.
Larry Hyrb: Really?
Phil Spencer: Yeah, yeah.
Larry Hyrb: You announced, we announced this last year. And I know that internally ... I haven't had a chance to do that yet. I've had my devices ready to go but I-
Phil Spencer: Yeah, so-
Larry Hyrb: Tell me about that.
Phil Spencer: It was fun. [crosstalk 00:25:44]
Larry Hyrb: Be careful!
Phil Spencer: No, I was just playing. I think that like anything, we want to make sure we get it as right as we can. And the best way for us to do that is to test it, test it for us.
Larry Hyrb: Play it.
Phil Spencer: I was, I don't mind saying, I was in Hawaii for a little while and I had my device and I'm playing and it's cool because when I'm doing it, I'm just on Xbox Live. Like I'm getting the same toast pop-ups, people inviting me to parties and stuff. Like to anybody else in the service, I'm just playing.
Phil Spencer: That's right. And there's I'm learning a lot as I'm playing games this way. It's helping me kinda think about the experience before we get it in the hands of customers. But I think it's just, when I think ... It'll be ... Let's be clear. It's gonna be years, I think, before this is the primary way millions of people are playing. But as ... Sitting at a company like Microsoft with the assets we have, I think we should focus on the now and let's go be great with the consoles we have in market now. And the games that we can go build. Let's think about our future and our kind of the existing spaces of console and PC, and let's go be real meaningful in those places. We've got significant work we've got to do on PC but I love the plan. But I think we should also have these kind of five, ten year views on where we think things can go. And I love the fact that we can play in all three of those horizons at the same time.
Phil Spencer: ... I saw some interesting stat, I'm sure we'll kind of publicize them at some point. Human Fall Flat is a game that's done incredibly well in Game Pass. And when we watch those players we say, "Okay. Oh, here's a puzzle game that we don't know how it would've done on Xbox without the exposure of Game Pass." You can never kind of do the before and after of that. But now you see, "Hey, we got a lot of other puzzle games that all of a sudden are becoming more popular. And where are those players coming from?"
Larry Hyrb: All boats rise.
Phil Spencer: Yeah, it's actually. Literally, it's coming from people who their first real puzzle genre game that they play was a game like Human Fall Flat.
https://majornelson.com/podcast/633-phi ... -stops-by/
I've been tempted to run through that on Dolphin for a while 
