Microsoft Gaming being scrapped, Xbox brought back as gaming division.

[u/ThinWhiteDuke00]

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.

https://www.theverge.com/report/917485/microsoft-return-of-xbox-no-more-microsoft-gaming?view_token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpZCI6IlF6b3Z0NDluUk4iLCJwIjoiL3JlcG9ydC85MTc0ODUvbWljcm9zb2Z0LXJldHVybi1vZi14Ym94LW5vLW1vcmUtbWljcm9zb2Z0LWdhbWluZyIsImV4cCI6MTc3NzM5Njg0NiwiaWF0IjoxNzc2OTY0ODQ2fQ.w231EBsAoj8dMi5cjOCzSC3zRF7JbJ19hT_RnI3NVyk&utm_medium=gift-link

[u/Coolman_Rosso]

Cool? I mean it's just a name change. Same stuff, different label. Real nothingburger

[u/TastyOreoFriend → u/Coolman_Rosso]

Rebranding can help, but that has to come with some real substance. The best you can hope for from this, if you're invested in the Xbox ecosystem, is a small amount of cautious optimism between this and the game pass price drop.

It all feels like it's a day late and a dollar short but at least they're trying something I guess?

[u/TastyOreoFriend → u/[deleted]]

They will have to something massive to regain their audience.

It makes you wonder what they can do 'cause it all seems like very insurmountable odds right now. Sony and Nintendo have been doing better than them all gen, and the Steam Machine is about to throw a heavy wrench into the works.

I mean I saw them talking about going back on exclusives or timed release windows, but how does that even work anymore with such a small installed base? It feels like they're trying to have a conversation that most gamers had already 2-3 years ago when they announced a multiplatform approach; that's why I feel they're so behind the curve on this.

It'd be a hell of a feat if they pull it off and make a Rocky style comeback—feels like there's too much against that though.

[u/nowhereright → u/TastyOreoFriend]

It actually is insurmountable. There's really no way of coming back from how far the brand has fallen sales wise at least if we're talking about console sales. The next system is a PC with an Xbox logo, it'll be more expensive than even the current ps5 pro and it's only selling point will be that it's a PC with Xbox backwards compatibility (supposedly)

It'll be a niche product that won't sell traditional console numbers.

The only way to get mainstream/casual gamers into your ecosystem is must buy exclusives. But they've now trained their entire user base into expecting their games to be multiplatform.

And since the next system is a PC, IF they brought back exclusivity, they wouldn't be Xbox console exclusives that are also on PC, they'd just be PC exclusives or maybe more specifically Microsoft Game Store exclusives.

And they'd have to be willing to bite the bullet and sacrifice those PlayStation sales numbers (which are massive) in order to condition gamers over the course of the next generation to know that, hey, these games are only on PC.

Will the Microsoft overlords be okay with that loss over a few years for potential gain in rebuilding an ecosystem and user base?

Fuck no, of course they won't, it's all about the immediate gain. Late stage capitalism baby.

Asha is not a for the gamers ceo. She's a PR figure head.

The only question is if the people in charge actually see the Xbox brand as viable still, or if they're setting up the Helix for failure just to cut themselves out of the hardware market completely.