Microsoft goes back to Xbox and ditches Microsoft Gaming as new leaders admit "players are frustrated" with the console and pricing: "We have to be honest about where we are"
Microsoft Gaming is changing its name back to Xbox as new leadership admits its losing players to languishing console features, rising prices, and a minimal presence on PC.
Xbox CEO Asha Sharma and CCO Matt Booty explain in a joint Xbox Wire post also “sent to Team Xbox employees globally,” informing them “We Are Xbox.” Literally – they are Xbox again, since “‘Microsoft Gaming’ describes our structure but it does not describe our ambition,” Sharma and Booty write. “So, we are going back to where we started and changing our team’s name.”
Microsoft Gaming is a relatively new concept created to represent the company as a historically massive conglomerate. It was established in 2022, after Xbox had successfully acquired Call of Duty publisher Activision Blizzard in a $68.7 billion deal that made some industry regulators weep. Likewise, Sharma and Booty now seem eager to associate the company with the more home-cooked feeling of Xbox in the 2000s.
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They write in their post, “From the beginning, Xbox was built by people willing to try things that others wouldn’t. We placed a consumer bet inside an enterprise company because we believed gaming would define the living room, and we were at risk of missing it.
“That spirit has carried us through the last 25 years, and it is required to carry us forward.”
The company’s leaders know modern Xbox “players are frustrated. New feature drops on console have been less frequent. Our presence on PC isn’t strong enough. Pricing is getting harder for people to keep up with.”
The solution, they think, is to re-establish “console is at the foundation” of Xbox while sprinkling some of that “everything is an Xbox” rhetoric Microsoft Gaming had been using in recent years. Asha and Booty reiterate, “You can play where you want, and your games, progress, friends, and identity stay with you across console, PC, mobile, and cloud.”
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But “we have to be honest about where we are,” they conclude. “We’re a challenger, and meeting this moment will require pace, energy, and a level of self-critique that should feel uncomfortable.”
Xbox Game Pass gets “grim prognosis” from former PlayStation CEO, new Xbox head Asha Sharma tells him they should “chat sometime.”
