Quick Facts
Biography
Phil Spencer (born January 12, 1968) is an American business executive, who is the current executive vice-president of Gaming at Microsoft. He is currently the head of the Xbox brand and leads the global creative and engineering teams responsible for gaming at Microsoft.
Personal life
Spencer earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Washington and currently serves on the boards of the First Tee of Greater Seattle and the Entertainment Software Association.
Career
Spencer joined Microsoft in 1988 as an intern and has worked in a number of technical roles, leading the development of Microsoft's first CD-ROM-based titles (such as Encarta), development manager for Microsoft Money, and general manager of Microsoft's online and offline consumer productivity products including Microsoft Works and Microsoft Picture It!
Spencer served as general manager of Microsoft Game Studios EMEA, working with Microsoft's European developers and studios such as Lionhead Studios and Rare until 2008, when he became the general manager of Microsoft Studios, eventually becoming the studio's corporate vice president a year later. He has participated in Microsoft's E3 conferences since 2010.
In late March 2014, Satya Nadella announced in a corporate e-mail that Spencer was to "lead the Xbox, Xbox Live, Groove Music and Movies & TV teams, and Microsoft Studios" as part of the Windows and Devices division.
In September 2017, Spencer was promoted to the Senior Leadership Team, gaining the title of Executive Vice President of Gaming and reporting directly to CEO Satya Nadella.
In 2018, Spencer delivered the keynote address at the 2018 DICE Summit. and spoke at the 2018 Game Awards.
Since taking over both Xbox and the Gaming division, Spencer has advocated for cross-platform play, as well as launched key initiatives, such as reintroducing backward compatibility to the Xbox platform, the purchase of Mojang, the further development and support of Minecraft, the introduction of Xbox Game Pass, launching the Xbox Adaptive Controller, an increased focus on PC gaming, support of the Nintendo Switch, the launch of xCloud, and increasing the number of first-party development studios.
In February 2020, Spencer spoke about the Xbox Series X confirming that it will not support VR, at least at launch.