Phil Spencer is head of Xbox.
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Microsoft’s new Xbox boss will put gamers first (interview)

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 5 min

Phil Spencer aims to make his company and Xbox brand more popular among gamers. The new head of the Xbox business at Microsoft said in an interview with GamesBeat this morning that he wants gaming to be a “first-class citizen in everything Microsoft does.” And he’s got the credibility to do that, since he has been running game development at Microsoft’s internal studios for many years.

Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella announced this morning that Spencer would replace Marc Whitten, who left to become the chief technology officer at audio tech firm Sonos. The choice isn’t a surprise, as Spencer has been running Microsoft internal game development since 2008, and he replaced Whitten in a talk at the recent Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.