The new course is a return to Xbox's identity as a global platform for gaming and creativity.
Xbox leadership has officially confirmed the abandonment of the Microsoft Gaming brand — the company's gaming division will once again be called simply Xbox. This is stated in a new address to employees titled We Are Xbox, signed by Asha Sharma and Matt Booty, which also outlines the platform's development strategy for the coming years.
The letter emphasizes that Xbox has come a long way since the early 2000s and today brings together more than 500 million players worldwide. However, the leadership openly acknowledges that the brand has serious problems, and that "players are disappointed".
Among the key shortcomings of the current ecosystem, the following are noted:
- Insufficiently strong presence on PC
- Infrequent feature updates on consoles
- Rising prices that players are finding increasingly difficult to accept
It is also emphasized that audience expectations have changed: games now compete not only with each other, but also with social media, films, TV series, and other forms of entertainment. At the same time, the industry is becoming increasingly global — a significant share of growth is coming from regions outside traditional markets, where developers are already successfully competing with the largest Western studios.
Xbox's future will be built around four key areas: hardware, content, user experience, and services. The main benchmark will be growth in the daily audience.
- Hardware: support for the current console generation, development of Project Helix, a focus on accessories and the ecosystem
- Content: development of popular franchises, stronger partnerships, expansion into new markets (including China and the mobile segment), support for live-service games and long-term projects such as Minecraft and Sea of Thieves
- User experience: improving the platform's core features, creating better conditions for developers, updating recommendation, personalization, and social systems
- Services: strengthening Game Pass with a clearer model, a return to sustainable growth, development of cloud gaming, as well as targeted mergers and acquisitions deals.
The letter also explains the reason for abandoning the old name: "Microsoft Gaming describes the structure, but does not reflect our ambitions." The new course is a return to Xbox's identity as a global platform for gaming and creativity.
The company is betting on accessibility, flexible pricing policy, personalization, and openness to developers of any scale. Consoles remain the foundation of the ecosystem, while cloud technologies are meant to expand access to games across any devices.
