Imagine Destiny being an Xbox exclusive. Imagine Guitar Hero being the same. These are two paths that could have been explored, had now Xbox boss Phil Spencer said yes to them at the time.
In an interview at PAX West, Spencer spoke about some of the games that he didn’t end up giving the green light to because they didn’t really click for him. Bungie’s Destiny slipped right through Spencer’s fingers, as he revealed he passed on Destiny, not believing it was “going to work.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDsvw-WPBfU/
He then went onto explain how Guitar Hero didn’t end up in Xbox’s lap as well. “An interesting one is when this team came down to Redmond and Alex Rigopulos, he pitches a game where they’re actually going to make plastic guitars, and they’re going to plug into consoles, and then they’re going to sell tracks where you’re going to play Simon on this guitar and I’m like, really? Do we really think that’s going to work? I hear that turned into a pretty good game.”
Spencer seems very self-aware of the potential mistakes he’s made. “I’ve made some of the worst game-choice decisions,” he said. But, it doesn’t seem like he holds any major regrets. “I try to look forward and be positive about the things that we are doing.” A great outlook there, Phil.