Xbox is Dead. Long live Xbox!

by Gamatroid 🎮 

Man. Little did I know that the same day I decided to embark on producing this new nostalgic Xbox zine, the entire world of Xbox would change.

Phil Spencer and Sarah Bond gone. Matt Booty promoted to Chief Content Officer (whatever that means). And Microsoft's former President of CoreAI, Asha Sharma, has been named Xbox's new CEO.

The Spencer era of Xbox is over, and despite his (seemingly) good intentions, it was almost constant mired in baffling decisions and poor execution.

Phil ascended to the throne in Spring 2014, following the disastrous launch of the Xbox One in Fall 2013, which launched bundled with Kinect and cost $100 more than the PlayStation 4. Phil made some early moves to try and right the ship, like unbundling the Kinect and lowering the price of the Xbox One, and the launch of Gamepass remains one of the best deals in gaming for gamers (yes, even at its current price), but fumble after fumble weakened the Xbox brand and ecosystem, and frustrated long-time fans.

Xbox solidly lost the Xbox One generation console war to the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch, and then followed that by solidly losing the current generation battle as well, with PlayStation 5 vastly outselling Xbox Series X/S.

Source: youtube/@statZwiki

The day they announced that now "everything is an Xbox" we all knew that Xbox was effectively dead.

While Xbox was busy destroying its brand value, Microsoft became the largest video game publisher in the world, through a series of substantial studio acquisitions. Microsoft expanded its game distribution to rivals PlayStation and Switch, and the era of Xbox console exclusive games seemed to be over.

All of this was seemingly wonderful for Microsoft, as it enabled the company to effectively compete in the video game market, but it was the final nail in the coffin for the Xbox brand. After all, if "everything is an Xbox" then nothing is.

But now, changes are afoot at Xbox.

Phil is out and Asha is in. Gamepass could be dead, and Asha has said the second of her "three commitments" is "the return of Xbox". 

While no one knows what an AI executive at the helm of Xbox will mean for the brand, it certainly can't do much worse than it did when it had an actual gamer at its head (sorry Phil).

I've been an Xbot since the very beginning, and it's been awful to watch Xbox's mismanagement and slow decay. While I'm not sure anything can really revive the Xbox brand at this point, I'd sure like to see them try.

Good luck to you Asha. The Xbots are counting on you.