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.