• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

The Verge: Microsoft brings Xbox back, scraps Microsoft Gaming

adamsapple

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
www.theverge.com

Microsoft brings Xbox back, scraps Microsoft Gaming

It’s all about a return to Xbox
www.theverge.com www.theverge.com


Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has had a busy week. Sharma held an internal town hall with Xbox employees today, just days after announcing an Xbox Game Pass price cut, commenting on the status of the Xbox mobile store, and teasing a mysterious Xbox and Discord partnership. One of the items on the agenda for the employee all-hands was scrapping Microsoft Gaming.

Sources familiar with the meeting tell me that Sharma announced that Microsoft is returning to using Xbox for its gaming division, instead of Microsoft Gaming. "Xbox needs to be our identity," said Sharma, noting that Microsoft Gaming was a departure from that.

Microsoft originally switched to Microsoft Gaming at the same time it announced its plan to acquire Activision Blizzard in 2022. Phil Spencer was promoted to Microsoft Gaming CEO at the time, in an effort to further position Microsoft's gaming efforts across Xbox, PC, mobile, and the cloud.

Sharma's decision to return to the Xbox division is part of her promise of a "return of Xbox," which increasingly looks like a way to put Xbox fans first and correct some previous strategic mistakes. Earlier this week, Sharma reversed a decision to add future Call of Duty titles to Xbox Game Pass, a decision that had originally been debated fiercely inside Microsoft and never made sense.

Microsoft has now plastered the "return of Xbox" slogan on the walls of its Xbox offices this week, along with "great games" and "future of play." This is the same message as Sharma's initial memo to Xbox employees in February, and part of her early work to make a mark with big decisions on Game Pass and the Xbox platform.

A new Xbox logo has also started appearing on Microsoft's campus this week, ahead of the Xbox showcase in June. It's a lot less flat that the current logo, with glass effects. I understand Microsoft has also been using this new logo with some of its internal Project Helix materials.
 
Last edited:
Angry Season 4 GIF by The Office
 
All of these are good moves to at least retain your existing customers. No idea how they are going to grow their customer base without exclusives though.
 
Pretty easy. Make gamepass for older games- remove day one.
Make games exclusive
Focus on gaming.

The exclusives part is probably the big one. I cant see em going back with the money they making. Kinda defeats the entire thing of what would hypothetically make your console special
 
Until she announces real exclusives to a first party console I won't believe it. She's just better at faking a real return to 360 days.
 
Bored Bugs Bunny GIF by MOODMAN

Until MS stops greenlighting and promoting woke crap like Avowed, South of Midnight, and the like, this is all just white noise essentially.
 
Helix Exclusive games (I mean fully exclusive no windows/steam)
No day one tier gamepass
Very Cheap online pass
Great games do sell consoles .. so make some and cutoff the woke crap

You know a classic exclusive console

.... anything from that is just flashes for their already loyal fanbase to get fooled again. (They are very very good at this Ill give them that).
 
Last edited:
I oddly like this move. In fact, I like it a lot.

Now give us a stripped down gaming focused version of Windows, you fuckers.
 
Magic Carpet said:
MS badly needs a new marketing team. I've never been happy with any of the names of their products. Always awkward and weird. Too long in naming, Too bland.
Click to expand...
They're struggling with names since the 360 - "it's in the center and all around"... yeah, it's bullshit

Xbox One - "it's the one machine to have everything"... my ass. By far the worst name ever. It's a bullshit confusing name since the first hardware it's always fucking called "one". Since the dawn of hardware we called "one" the first launched for fucks sake.

Xbox Series S/X - following a trend of smartphones... Kinda acceptable, since it's easy to understand, but everyone agrees that this isn't a gaming console name, so also kinda eh
 
Considering mostly every fuck up by Phil Spencer was blamed on Satya Nutella with the reasoning that Phil was only carrying out Nutela's orders, its only fair to credit Nutella with all these positive changes and not Asha.
 
Last edited:
This is probably the worst marketing team ever. They flip flop so much it'll just cause confusion with the casual buyers. Next it will be we have 3 tiers of fuckery:

1. Microsoft Xbox Gaming Studios Game Pass Ultimate
2. Microsoft Xbox Gaming Studios Game Pass Premium
3. Microsoft Xbox Gaming Studios Game Pass Poor people
 
Bernardougf said:
Helix Exclusive games (I mean fully exclusive no windows/steam)
No day one tier gamepass
Very Cheap online pass
Great games do sell consoles .. so make some and cutoff the woke crap

You know a classic exclusive console

.... anything from that is just flashes for their already loyal fanbase to get fooled again. (They are very very good at this Ill give them that).
Click to expand...
Helix exclusive games will only be GTA6, MLB The Show, NHL, and College Football. Asking for no PC versions, will never happen as that is the entire point of the Play Anywhere part including Handhelds.

Online multiplayer is meant to go free, Day 1 Gamepass tier doesn't prevent users from buying games you know.
 
That's pretty encouraging. Now slowly kill Game Pass and rediscover that you make money by selling full price games at launch (first step happened very recently). And then, start putting back exclusives, one after another. Start with exclusivity periods.
 
Last edited:
I really don't know how they can bring back Xbox since everything they have done since "Day 1 on Windows" has been against xbox as a brand?
 
BennyBlanco said:
Microsoft Gaming is just such a dull and boring name.
Click to expand...
Exactly. People think of gaming they tend to think "fun." But they never get that far because they see "Microsoft" and nope out because nobody associates Microsoft and fun. I say it all the time, but going Microsoft corporate with Xbox One was a fatal error that stripped Xbox of its scrappy underdog image.

I'm a proponent of rebuilding the Xbox brand in a way that distances it from the Microsoft branding as far as possible. They need something fun and what they've been doing since Xbox One isn't it.
 
Tobimacoss said:
Helix exclusive games will only be GTA6, MLB The Show, NHL, and College Football. Asking for no PC versions, will never happen as that is the entire point of the Play Anywhere part including Handhelds.

Online multiplayer is meant to go free, Day 1 Gamepass tier doesn't prevent users from buying games you know.
Click to expand...
As I said anything from that is a fart in the wind and will continue to be a failed system
 
Bernardougf said:
As I said anything from that is a fart in the wind and will continue to be a failed system
Click to expand...
Then let it be a failed system, I would much rather keep Play Anywhere, Gamepass Ultimate, xCloud than worry about keeping few games tied down to a specific hardware so others can't enjoy them without spending hundreds of dollars.
 
This is what is so frustrating about Microsoft. They will have a president come around and be like "we are focusing on Xbox" and for a few years it is probably the best general gaming platform.

Then some other moron gets in power and tries to integrate Xbox with every other line of business they have and generally ruins it.
 
Tobimacoss said:
Then let it be a failed system, I would much rather keep Play Anywhere, Gamepass Ultimate, xCloud than worry about keeping few games tied down to a specific hardware so others can't enjoy them without spending hundreds of dollars.
Click to expand...
LoL you can use this "everyone" should play bullshit as long as you like... so be it .. another failed system catered to the few shills that will buy anything from them.
 
Magic Carpet said:
MS badly needs a new marketing team. I've never been happy with any of the names of their products. Always awkward and weird. Too long in naming, Too bland.
Click to expand...
What do you have against Office Office 365 Microsoft 365 Microsoft 365 Copilot?

It's not like they once named a product "Zune", or anything.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Microsoft Xbox Helix My Thoughts
45
565
Magic Carpet replied
[The Verge] Microsoft says you should build next-gen Xbox games by building them for PC
News Game Dev Platform  2 3 4 5
200
2K
DeltaPolarBear replied
  • Poll
[Verge] Xbox is now XBOX
2 3
145
722
MisterXDTV replied
Microsoft has reportedly eased the pressure on its Xbox gaming division
Opinion Rumor Business  2
82
1K
Cert.in.Death replied
Microsoft is removing SMS codes for signing into personal Microsoft accounts, including Xbox accounts
News Sales-Age Platform 
39
351
winjer replied
Top Bottom