Xbox gamers haven’t had too much to be excited about in recent years, but a recent change in leadership is ushering in a promising new era for Microsoft’s console brand. First we’ve got an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate price cut that’s ideal for non-Call of Duty gamers and not a bad deal for people who enjoy it too. Now we’ve got the new boss Asha Sharma setting out a clear mission statement for the future around the name ‘Xbox’.
In a blog post attributed to Sharma and Matt Booty that was also sent to Xbox staffers on April 23, the company admitted that gamers are frustrated by the current status quo and that “the model that got us here won’t be the one that takes us forward” toward the next-generation, as a challenger brand to the dominant PlayStation offering.
Part of it is accepting the Xbox identity as a guiding principle of a coming transformation in the way the company works. It’ll be through four priorities, Sharma and ; hardware, content, experience and services, all of which will help the next-gen Project Helix console realise its potential.
“We are Xbox,” the new leadership team wrote. “Our best work happens when the full stack moves together. “Microsoft Gaming” describes our structure but it does not describe our ambition. So, we are going back to where we started and changing our team’s name.
“We are a high agency culture where wild and wonderful ideas thrive. Our job is not to smooth over our differences, but to connect everyone into something greater than any one studio or product. We have to be honest about where we are. We’re a challenger, and meeting this moment will require pace, energy, and a level of self-critique that should feel uncomfortable. At our best we:
- Earn every player
- Protect our art
- Stay rebellious
- Progress over perfection
- Signal over ceremony
- Core before more
- Outwork the problem
- Speed is learning
- Makers over managers”
If you’re a longtime or disillusioned plan, there’s plenty of positive talk within the blog and it’s well worth a read. The Xbox fightback under the new leadership will be one of the biggest stories in tech over the next couple of years.
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