It has been less than two months since Phil Spencer stepped down from leading Microsoft’s entire gaming division, with Asha Sharma taking over. At the time, many expressed concerns given her background in Microsoft’s AI division. However, she quickly won over the community by clearly rejecting any AI-related “slop,” promising a return to Xbox consoles, and discarding the criticized “This is an Xbox” campaign.
Things have been moving at a rapid pace since then. Promises have been made to further expand industry-leading backward compatibility, address Quick Resume issues, introduce Project Helix, host an Xbox Partner Preview, and just last week, a major overhaul of the Achievements system was announced. But Sharma isn’t done yet; just yesterday, reports emerged that she believes Game Pass has become too expensive and aims to increase the subscription’s value for players.
But why stop there? On The Xbox Two Podcast (via Pure Xbox), Windows Central editor-in-chief Jez Corden now claims his sources indicate significant internal discussions are underway regarding Xbox exclusivity.
“There are very, very, very big discussions about the exclusivity stuff right now. They recognise the value – it’s just a question of what kind of company you want to be, ultimately. Do you want to be an ecosystem-first company, or do you want to be a publishing-first company?”
Corden suggests that internally at Microsoft, even up to CEO Satya Nadella, there’s a growing realization that Xbox holds more value for the company than previously acknowledged.
“You can’t do both well, either the hardware operation will shrink down to essentially what Surface is now, a shadow of its former self, not its deathbed, do you really want that for your Xbox brand which is the only consumer-facing ecosystem that has any form of cloud with the consumers, And Satya said in the leaked conversation with staff that Xbox has value on the corporate side too because when I meet a lot of executives, they don’t want to talk about cloud, they want to talk about Xbox, they want to talk about Halo, they want to talk about Xbox games, that’s where you reach your consumers when they’re not working, I think they’re recognising that more and more.”
That said, the issue isn’t entirely straightforward, as Microsoft’s games have sold incredibly well on PlayStation consoles. Corden concludes by stating, “at the end of the day, they’re leaving money on the table and it’s hard to argue with the spreadsheet.”
What do you think Asha Sharma and her Xbox team will decide?