In a resurfaced interview from February 2025, former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick suggested that the career of the former Head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, could have taken quite a different path. In this interview, Kotick states that he wanted Phil Spencer to join him at Activision Blizzard before he joined Xbox, and that one day he could have even become Kotick’s successor.
While Phil Spencer officially joined the Xbox team in 2001, he had been an employee of Microsoft since the late 1980s. In 2014, Spencer was tasked by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella with leading multiple divisions of the Xbox brand, and in 2022, after several promotions, Spencer took on the role of CEO of Microsoft Gaming. Phil Spencer retained this leadership role up until February of this year, with Asha Sharma taking over the position upon his retirement.
Phil Spencer Could Have Been The Head of Activision
Back in February 2025, former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick appeared on Kleiner Perkins’ Grit podcast to talk at length about his personal history in the gaming landscape. This interview was recently shared by Idle Sloth on Twitter, with the user highlighting one particularly interesting part of the interview. At the 1 hour and 56 minute mark, Bobby Kotick states that he once hired Phil Spencer to run one of Activision’s “businesses.”
Rearrange the covers into the correct US release order.
Rearrange the covers into the correct US release order.
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However, Phil Spencer reportedly didn’t take this senior leadership role at Activision as he had just been offered the position of Head of Xbox. Kotick says that he told Spencer to take the Xbox job as while he would have loved to have had him at Activision, he recognized that this was a dream role for him. Kotick goes on to say that Phil Spencer would “probably” have been his successor, implying that the former Head of Xbox could have been the CEO of Activision Blizzard if he had never gotten the promotion at Xbox.
Further in the interview, Bobby Kotick explains how his relationship with Phil Spencer positively affected Xbox’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, a process that began in January 2022, the same month that saw Spencer officially become the CEO of Microsoft Gaming. Kotick says that he “knew the guy, liked the guy,” and thought that Spencer would be a good “steward” for Activision Blizzard and its future. Kotick also said that, from what he had heard, Xbox hadn’t changed too much about the structure of Activision Blizzard following the acquisition’s completion, and that “people seem pretty happy.”
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This interview took place four months before the mass layoffs in July 2025, which saw 9,000 Microsoft employees losing their jobs, including those who worked at Activision Blizzard-owned studios like Raven Software, Sledgehammer Games, and High Moon Studios. Under new management, Xbox has announced another round of mass layoffs set to take place between now and the end of fiscal year 2026, which will see 3,600 employees lose their job. It’s currently unclear just how these layoffs will affect the studios under the Activision Blizzard banner.
