Xbox’s Phil Spencer Was Asked About Retirement A Year Ago, And Here’s What He Said

We’ve finally now managed to grasp that Phil Spencer is actually leaving Xbox in the very near future — he’s currently sticking around until the summer to help Asha Sharma get settled in as Microsoft Gaming CEO — and it’s reminded us of a few things that were said about his potential retirement over the course of last year.

In January of 2025, YouTuber Destin specifically asked Spencer about how he would be reaching retirement age in the next ten years, and what he hoped Xbox would “become” over that period of time.

His response is pretty fascinating, so we’ll transcribe parts of it for you below:

“I have a fundamental belief that gaming is a good thing for the planet… I want gaming to continue to grow, because I do think it’s just a fundamentally important part of entertainment. I think it’s better than any other form of entertainment, I just love the way it builds community and brings things together.”

“[In regards to Xbox] I want us to be part of that. I don’t want us to fall into “we do tomorrow what we did yesterday because it’s what we’ve always done”. I don’t want us to be afraid to innovate. Some of the things will work great, some of them won’t, but let’s stay nimble… let’s make sure that we stay as a team, a team that’s willing to take risks, learn from the things that work and the things that don’t work…”

Around six months after this interview, a leaker known as TheGhostofHope (who interestingly was contacted by Activision recently), shared a rumour that Phil Spencer would be retiring after the launch of the next Xbox console, which was actually shut down by Microsoft at the time — they said he wouldn’t be retiring “anytime soon”.

That obviously didn’t end up proving the case, with Spencer announcing on February 20th (2026) that he would be retiring from Xbox. He’d mentioned in the past about how he’d been encouraged to think about succession for years, and we’re sure he’ll be passing on as much knowledge as he possibly can to Asha Sharma over the coming months.