#Microsofrt games division president windows#
Sinofsky previously led the Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group, and in his new role he will assume. While the splintered team managed to launch the Xbox One "mostly on time" that holiday season, as Spencer put it, that lack of leadership meant that there were "some of the parts of the platform that weren't completely done when we launched. Microsoft has promoted Steven Sinofsky to president of the Windows division. "I don't think it was the best move for stability of our launch," Spencer recalled. With just months to go before launch when Mattrick left, control of the Xbox brand was splintered across three teams: a platform team headed by Marc Whitten a first-party games team led by Spencer in "another" part of the company and a separate marketing team that had been "moved out" from the rest of the Xbox planning.
The retirement of Xbox President Don Mattrick in July of 2013, just after the Xbox One's troubled E3 debut, left planning for the Xbox One launch "distributed amongst the company in what I would say is a way that wasn't really feasible for Xbox," Spencer said.
Further Reading Analysis: The one-two combo Sony used to knock Microsoft out of E3 2013In an extensive interview with Shacknews, Spencer looks back a bit at the tumult within Microsoft in general (and the Xbox division in particular) leading up to the Xbox One rollout. Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, right, speaks as Christopher Eisgruber, president of Princeton University, left, and Princeton Graduate Maria De La Cruz Perales Sanchez listen during a news.