For Xbox, nostalgia is no longer enough. Forget about bringing in new users, Microsoft’s current gaming strategy will struggle to keep even loyalists and fanboys hanging around for too long. Even internal Microsoft voices acknowledge how gaming on Xbox feels fragmented, where players are irritated, feature drops don’t make sense, and modern gaming essentials are clunky at best.
In an internal memo that’s blunt with very little sugarcoating, new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma and Chief Content Officer Matt Booty have effectively admitted to all the issues plaguing Microsoft gaming. They have laid out what they are calling a “return of Xbox” as a strategic correction of the future trajectory of gaming at Microsoft.
Beyond the obvious chest-thumping rhetoric of “Xbox will be where the world plays and creates,” for me the memo’s most revealing sentiment is the priority laid out by Xbox CEO Asha Sharma. “Our new north star will be daily active players,” the memo states without mincing any words. That is the sort of language of a company manifesto that wants to get aggressively focused on what matters.
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It’s not just about selling Xbox gaming consoles, but crucially how gamers are choosing to remain inside Xbox’s gaming ecosystem at large. That differentiation makes all the difference from what Xbox was to where it’s going next, I think.
The console business of Xbox, the memo says, remains “large and stable,” but Windows now accounts for more players and more hours. And that’s where competition is at its fiercest in the gaming industry. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma and content chief Matt Booty are acknowledging that the old centre of gravity has shifted. Xbox is still built on consoles, yes, but the future it is now describing is a layered platform spanning console, PC, mobile and cloud. This means an Xbox gamer’s identity and progress should follow the user rather than remaining chained to a single plastic box.
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The four priority buckets laid out in the memo – hardware, content, experience and services – are also quite telling of Microsoft’s bets on Xbox and future of gaming. The part about Xbox needing a stronger long-term franchise stewardship, and a sharper push into emerging markets and mobile-first audiences is on point. The bit in the memo about experience is all about making Xbox the best place for developers and creators to build.
There is also a philosophical reset here, especially on platform exclusive games. Sharma and Booty say they will reevaluate exclusivity, and that’s a big call. Xbox in recent years has often looked like a company unsure whether it wanted to be a platform or publisher, or a subscription utility. Current reporting suggests exclusivity is actively under review again, under new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, even if no hard reversal has been announced yet.
Most symbolic of all, though, is the rebrand at the very end of the memo. “Microsoft Gaming” is out, “We are Xbox,” the memo declares emphatically. That is more than a naming tweak in my books. It is an admission that the brand drifted and its identity blurred in the past few years. Sharma’s memo reads like an attempt to bring Xbox where it truly belongs.
It also feels like an attempt to remind Microsoft at large that gaming does not thrive by behaving like another enterprise org chart. Gaming is a lot more personal, intimate, and something that gives gamers and community a reason to care. At least on this evidence of a memo, Xbox wants to do all that and more.
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