Well. Sarah Bond, the missing ex-president of Xbox, has finally spoken. She issued a carefully-crafted statement about being appreciative of her time with Xbox, but it was time for her to move on to new things. Here is her statement in full. Not one single person believes it’s true for several reasons. One, there was a post on her LinkedIn just a few hours before Phil Spencer (her boss) “retired” that was about accessibility. The way it was stated made it clear that it was just a common post and that there was no hint of her resigning. The post was taken down several hours later, so clearly, Sarah Bond ‘resigning’ was not planned.
People in the industry have pointed out that while there’s a lot of love being given to Spencer (by the Xbox team as he “retired”), but there was no mention of Sarah Bond. At all. It was as if she never existed. And today, not only was there the statement above by her, but there was a piece about her in the Verge by Tom Warren that talks about how she was not well-liked by Xbox employees. I can’t link it because I don’t have a subscription, but I have included a Kinda Funny Games video below that talks about it at length.
It talks about how she was the one who pushed the ‘everything is an Xbox’ idea (meaning, you don’t need an Xbox console in order to play their games). Except, Phil Spencer was the one who came up with the idea; he was the one who brought Sarah Bond in; and he was the one who nudged her in that direction. She was presumed to be his handpicked successor, which means that she probably didn’t do much without his approval.
I want to say that I have no insider knowledge I am not in the industry, so this is all my personal observation. I want to make that clear.
There is no fucking way she left of her own volition. There just isn’t. I understand why Microsoft might choose to play it that way; really, they didn’t have much of a choice. So, as far as I have read/heard, they were planning on doing this today (Monday), but they got word that IGN was going to post something about it on Friday, so they had to act quickly.
Look. I have no love for Sarah Bond or Xbox. I dropped Game Pass once they made the boneheaded decision to hike up the prices, especially the ultimate or whatever the highest level is called. I never really used it, anyway. I mean, I tried out one or two games every other month or so. It probably was worth it in the long run, but I still was just sick of their shit.
I am not a console person at all, so I am not really affected by what they do. Except in the case of not being able to play certain games because they are exclusives–that’s mostly PlayStation, though. Ugh. I have yelled about them enough for now.
Wait. No I have not. Fuck them. Fuck them for closing Bluepoint. Yeah, I had to say it again.
Back to Sarah Bond. She was pushed out. I am confident as I can be about that. She can talk about spending time with her family all she wants, but she would still be at the job if she hadn’t been pushed out. Everyone in the business feels the same, too.
It’s been a long week. Hell, it’s been a long year already. We’re not even into March, yet, and we can just call this year a wash. It’s been so terrible that we might as well move to 2027. Now, I’m not talking about games specifically. It’s just been a firehose of a year in general. As someone living in the Twin Cities….yeah.
It’s been quite the experience to be living in the Twin Cities in the year of 2026. Not a good one, mind you, but an experience, nonetheless. It’s really wild to be living with a federal government that was (is) specifically targeting your state. I know that it happens around the world, so I can’t be too surprised that it happened in America. But, I will say, it’s hard to deal with when it’s targeted specifically at your people.
My people stood up. Minnesotans (and manyy around the country if not the world) said, “No. We aren’t doing this.”
I said at the time that I hated that we were constantly told to meet hate with love and violence with peace. Don’t get me wrong. I know that’s the right take. I know that’s the only way to not look like the bad guy (though, god knows, they tried so hard), but it’s like telling an abused person just to sit there and take it.
*Refrains from doing a five-thousand word screed about this topic*
I’m tired. I’m so very tired. I have said that I did not come back from death (twice!) to deal with this shit. I really did not. I was grateful to come back (and very surprised!) ,but now, I just don’t really see any reason to care. This world is shit. Some are hopeful that we’ve turned the corner, but I’m not. Why? Because–that’s not this post. I’m not going to get into it.
I resent having to care about consoles, if I’m going to be honest with you. I’m a PC person and have been for life. I don’t give a shit about consoles. All things being equal, games look and play better on PC than they do on consoles. Given, you have to have the equipment necessary to make it so (which, these days is not a given at all. I was planning on getting a new PC this year, but that certainly isn’t going to happen because of the RAM shortage/AI bullshit), then you can play almost any game available on a PC.
Well, except for the terrible ports, but that’s the fault of the developers/publishers and not an issue with the PCs themselves.
*Restrains from making that rant, too*
Obviously, I am not going to buy a new PC right now. I might beef my current one up if I feel it needs it, but I may not just bother. Honestly, if I’m not playing From games, I don’t have to worry about it so much in general because I play mostly cozy games. High fidelity, they do not need.
I’m done for today. I’ll be back tomorrow for one last (ha) post on this subject.