Phil Spencer Talks About Two Activision Games That Xbox Missed Out On Signing

“I’ve made some of the worst game choice decisions”.

During PAX West 2024, Xbox boss Phil Spencer hosted a ‘Story Time’ chat about the gaming industry, discussing many different aspects of the business - including some of Xbox’s history. In that chat, Phil was asked about some of the biggest games that Microsoft ‘missed out’ on signing up, and the boss mentioned two popular series that went on to live for years to come.

When they were being conceptualised by their individual dev teams, Xbox was pitched to publish both Destiny and Guitar Hero. At the time, Destiny dev Bungie had only just split with Microsoft, so that one perhaps makes more sense - but the boss goes into a bit more detail on the team skipping over Guitar Hero.