A new interview with new Xbox kingpin Phil Spencer showed up recently, as Spencer sat down with Director of Programming Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb and made it clear that Microsoft had some very big plans for the gaming community, noting just what he--along with the company--had to bring to the table. But one of the biggest remarks out of Spencer's interview was one that would likely raise a few eyebrows to go along with it.

"Fundamentally, this is a company that wants to do things that change the world. And they have the resource and the ambition to do that, whether that's with Xbox or any of the projects that we build."

That's a big statement, right there, and one that's going to put Spencer's credibility on the line for some time to come. Spencer offered some elaboration around this theme, noting that he'd been with the company 26 years--longer than some of Xbox's audience had even been alive--starting as a software development intern and heading steadily up the ranks, taking a hand in game development like "Fable" and "Rise of Nations." Earlier interviews showed some of Microsoft's plans for E3--now just about two months out--and indeed, Microsoft has some plans to talk about.

But the question of the day, not surprisingly, is, does Microsoft have chops sufficient to cash the check that Spencer wrote with that interview? Here, I would say that indeed it does, assuming it's ready to actually step up and make its presence felt. The last several months for Microsoft have been unusual to say the least; not only has Microsoft been fighting back from a position of comparative weakness, struggling to come back from the 2013 E3 event, struggling to make up ground lost to Sony after that "this is how you share games on PlayStation 4" video...just in general, struggling to come back. That struggle is writ large across much of the game market; we've seen how far behind Microsoft is when compared against Sony, though at least some of that may have something to do with price and a lot less to do with the gamer perception of Microsoft and Xbox.

But we have to bear in mind that Microsoft has given us a lot of successes. So there's every possibility that, with the next few months ahead of us, we may well see some of the biggest successes seen yet on the tour. Microsoft has given us a lot to love, but has given us plenty of reason for concern. The next several months will really tell the story on this one, but Microsoft has shown a clear willingness to address gamer concerns and actually bring out the system that gamers want. That's a good sign—a very good sign, really—but only time will really tell if Microsoft can change the world in the fashion it intends.