Phil Spencer Reacts To This Week's Xbox Game Pass 'Shadow Drop'

That’s better Phil just come out for the positive news and keep the business ABK trouble etc away in the office where it belongs.

@Kaloudz I read it as preventing future pr issues of some people asking after the starfield event why wasn’t that stealth dropped. Or after the June event why no game stealth dropped.

Hell starfield comments last night on twitter asking why it wants there was already crazy

I read it more as giving credit to Bethesda and Tango pulling off the shadow drop. Not MS leadership taking credit themselves.

Nintendo does this for its Indie World and sometimes Directs, but I still don't expect it from them. Same applies to Xbox, Idk why everyone has to get carried away about this stuff.

@Kaloudz I didnt at all, at most I’m seeing it as tempering down expectations from everyone that is now talking and theorizing that every developer direct will have a shadow drop.

The problem is we got too many “what else do they have in store?” comments. Which, one. Is a bit ungrateful to always say “okay what’s next?”, but two, does a disservice to Xbox.

Shadow drops are great and special because they’re rare. They obviously won’t happen with games that also have a physical release. And they won’t happen wirh many games. But hats off to Xbox for shwdow dropping Hi-Fi Rush — what might be the most exciting new Xbox game this entire generation (so far) for me — and being willing to excite the fans. I think we should be happy we get to be surprised and delighted, rather than just expecting it for every game now.

‘Uncle Phil comes out and states the obvious’

I guess he's trying to temper expectation again.

The issue is that team xbox were all over keeping expectations in check for the show and stating 'there are just 4 games like we announced, you cant expect anything else'. But then they deliver 5.
That's great, but it means we will all speculate about what they might do, no matter what they state, as they were not truthful before!
Now we are all going to wander what the next shadow drop will be on a dev Direct, and some will be disappointed when there isn't one.

@Kaloudz backhanded? No lol... He basically just said Bethesda is run like Bethesda as in they get some autonomy instead of Microsoft telling them what to do every step of the way.

Shadow drops work for games like that because of the kind of experience it is but if they just released something that usually would be require a big marketing push to maximize sales then a shadow drop would be horrible.

Remember most of gamers or people who play games don't follow news or watch the events... We are the 1%. They need to also reach the 99% and that game would have probably sold very few copies on steam or Xbox had they just plopped it on gamepass and hoped the mass market found it and played it.

He answering the question the way it needs to be answered because people will expect this all the time and while Microsoft has done tons of releases the same day of the show Phil is right when he says it's not the right move for everything... That's not backhanded that's him saying Bethesda made a great game, decided to bring it to Ms and say hey let's release this on show day and it worked out great because the buzz was huge once people started playing.

@Kaloudz well it's hard to understand someone's intent regardless of the topic and Phil is so... Deadpan with his emotions, well except for at the game awards when he was on camera thinking about getting laser eyes to use on Jim Ryan that it can be easy to misconstrue.