The pieces are still in play, but as we watch them moving around the board, the strategy becomes clear: Microsoft no longer sees a distinction between gaming on Xbox One and Windows PC. And it doesn't want you to see one, either.

Microsoft's ambition makes sense, and this holistic view has had a long time coming. The company has been deeply invested in gaming for ages, and yet the PC and the Xbox console have lived largely separate, parallel lives. Today, though, when Microsoft mentions playing games, it's not just about Xbox gaming or Windows gaming. It's about gaming, period.

For more than a year, the man behind that message has been Phil Spencer. He runs Xbox. After assuming that office in 2014 he made Microsoft's pitch for the Xbox One focus more on games than entertainment. This year, when he talks about gaming, he's as likely to mention Xbox as he is Windows.

"We had discussions before I took this role around where I would want to take gaming and where Microsoft would want to take gaming," Spencer told Polygon at Gamescom 2015. "I think when we look back on Xbox five years from now or so, I think Windows itself will be a critical component to the success I think we can realize of Xbox itself — and gaming will be a critical component of the success of Windows. I really believe that. When we say 'putting gamers at the center,' that's different than putting a piece of plastic or a specific device at the center."

Spencer described his role in two evolutions: The transformation of Xbox One under his leadership and Microsoft's embrace of gaming on Windows. This interview took place at the last of the year's gigantic gaming shows, and he's spent much of 2015 standing on stages talking about Xbox and Windows in the same breath.

Spencer's business cards may call him the Head of Xbox, but in fact that title is becoming less and less accurate. In 2015, Spencer is as much a representative for gaming at Microsoft as he is the head of its console business.

Phil Spencer, Head of Xbox

INHERITING A MESS

Phil Spencer took the Xbox helm in March 2014, about four months after a less-than-stellar launch for the Xbox One. Prior to his promotion, the 25-year company veteran served as chief of its video game production arm, Microsoft Studios. The moment he started his new job, he inherited, well, a mess.

Microsoft's original vision for the Xbox One was strange, at least to the hardcore gamers it needed to form its early-adoption base. The company unveiled the console in May 2013 with a sales pitch that was as much about entertainment as gaming. Kinect, the first version of which was once touted as the fastest-selling consumer electronics device in history, stood at the center of console. Kinect 2.0 wasn't just about games, Microsoft said. It was a radical new way to interact with a device designed to be the hub of its owners' living room. In the future, we'd interact with the "all-in-one games and entertainment system" using voice commands and gesture controls while streaming video, watching TV and, yes, playing games.

Former Xbox executive Don Mattrick shows off the Xbox One at its debut

To longtime Microsoft watchers, the Xbox One seemed like the logical conclusion of a longstanding desire to embed the company in living rooms, just as it had in offices with Windows. Yes, Microsoft talked about games and promised to continue that legacy. But the original vision of Xbox One didn't resonate with many gamers — certainly not next to Sony's gaming-centered pitch for the PlayStation 4, which has outsold the Xbox One since both consoles launched in November 2013, according to NPD data.

To compound matters, there were tone-deaf debacles about sharing Xbox One games and requiring an internet connection to use the machine. Microsoft quickly backtracked on both policies after vociferous complaining. There was more. Inside of a year after launch, Kinect went from an "integral" part of the Xbox One to an option. Microsoft began selling a Kinect-less Xbox One in June 2014 and Kinect by itself in October 2014. Then Microsoft aggressively slashed the console's price, more closely matching and often undercutting the PS4, which was introduced at $100 less than the Xbox One. Xbox Entertainment Studios, founded in early 2013 to produce "true interactive content" for the Xbox brand— i.e. video, not games — was dissolved in mid-2014.

Though nobody at Microsoft ever quite said it, Xbox One's first year of existence was the philosophical repudiation of it. Not of its entertainment potential, necessarily, but the ways in which Microsoft sold it all. A few months after the console's May 2013 reveal, Xbox head Don Mattrick left the company. By March 2014, Phil Spencer was the man tasked with its rebirth. He brought a fresh perspective.

His perspective was all about games.

THE XBOX ONE RISES

Spencer's vision couldn't have been more clear when Polygon spoke with him shortly after his promotion.

"With me, you're going to get a focus on gaming first and a best platform to play games on," he said last year. "It's not a focus we ever lost, but it's one I'll be accentuating at Microsoft. It's really going to be a gaming-led focus with Xbox and my new role allows us to execute on that."

He believes the best Xbox One experience includes Kinect, but it doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing proposition. Likewise, all that stuff about the console being a media and non-gaming entertainment hub remains important, but the keys to the Xbox One's success, says Spencer, are the games you play on it.

A few months after assuming office, at Microsoft's E3 2014 press conference, Spencer got his first opportunity to tout his vision. He ended it by saying, in effect, "And that was 90 minutes of games." In the 14 months since, Spencer and Xbox have driven that point hard in every public appearance. "Whoops!" is the implication. "We get it now. And we'll prove it with games."

Microsoft still is doubling down with the message. At Gamescom 2015 it proclaimed the console's upcoming slate of games as the "greatest games lineup in Xbox history." Agree or not, the intent is clear.