The Microsoft Gaming name is gone, and the Redmond giant’s games division is now operating under the name everyone used for it anyway, Xbox.
Asha Sharma shared a new Xbox Wire post in which she did far more than simply confirm that Microsoft Gaming is reverting back to Xbox. She also laid out her and Matt Booty’s plans for the next era of the brand. In the internal letter titled We Are Xbox, Sharma and Booty begin by explaining how Xbox has always positioned itself differently since entering the industry at the start of the new millennium, and how the platform now reaches more than 500 million players around the world. But the letter quickly pivots to what is wrong with the brand’s current state, openly acknowledging a basic truth, players are frustrated. It describes how Xbox lacks a strong enough presence on PC, how new console features have become less frequent, how pricing has become a major problem that players are struggling to keep up with, and how both audiences and the industry itself want change. The memo also addresses how players’ expectations have shifted over time and how games are no longer competing only with other games, but with social media, television, films, books, and everything else fighting for people’s attention.
The question of whether Xbox will return to full exclusivity is clearly still hanging over Sharma’s thinking, and the broader idea that the brand needs to move beyond the model that brought it here may also mean players should not expect a straightforward swing back to locking everything down. That impression is reinforced by the letter itself. While it lays out a broad strategy for the future of Xbox, exclusives are only mentioned briefly, when the company says it is re-evaluating its stance on exclusivity, release timing, and artificial intelligence, and will share more once decisions are made. Dividing their plans into four categories, hardware, content, experience, and services, Sharma and Booty summarize the new goals and state that the company’s new guiding star will be daily active players.
On the hardware side, the goal is to strengthen ninth-generation consoles as a stable, reliable, high-quality foundation, use Project Helix to lead in performance, make sure both console and PC games can run across the ecosystem, stay ahead in comfortable, personalized, high-performance accessories, and build a stronger ecosystem that expands choice and reach. For content, the goal is to grow a durable portfolio of beloved franchises, improve third-party partnerships, reinforce the five-year slate, expand into China and other emerging markets, reach mobile-first audiences, maintain live service and long-term stewardship, and keep developing creator-centric platforms such as Minecraft, The Elder Scrolls, and Sea of Thieves. On the experience front, the plan is to improve the fundamentals for players and partners, make Xbox the best place for developers and creators to build and grow, and rethink discovery, customization, community, and personalization. On the services side, the goal is to strengthen Game Pass with clear differentiation and sustainable economics, return the business to durable growth with tighter cost discipline, make cloud gaming feel native, fast, and reliable across TVs and lower-cost devices, and use mergers and acquisitions selectively where organic growth would simply be too slow.
The letter also spells out the values that Xbox wants to embody at its best. It says the brand will try to earn the trust of every player, protect their art, preserve its rebellious spirit, value progress over perfection, substance over quantity, solve problems through hard work, treat speed as part of learning, favor creators over managers, and believe that clarity equals kindness. The Microsoft Gaming name is being retired because, while it described the structure, it no longer captured the ambition. So the team is returning to the name it began with and reasserting that it is simply Xbox.
Almost everything in Sharma and Booty’s letter is the sort of thing players, especially those who have spent multiple generations building libraries around Xbox, want to hear. They want to see a platform trying to regain its strength rather than simply drifting out of the race and leaving PlayStation and Nintendo as the only giants standing. Sharma also clearly embraces the claim that she is personally leading the brand’s transformation. The price cuts to Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass were a major step toward pulling players back to the Xbox side, and communication of this kind could help keep that momentum alive.
“The industry is becoming more global and more competitive. More than half of market revenue, players, and growth now come from outside our core markets. But the rest of the world is not simply one large market. Developers there are increasingly competing with the most influential Western studios by combining scale, speed, and a willingness to rethink genres many once believed were already mature. The model that got us here will not be the one that takes us forward. Xbox will be the place where the world plays and creates. We are building a global platform that connects players and creators everywhere. The console will remain the premium foundation, and the cloud will extend that experience to any device. Xbox will be affordable, personal, and open. We will offer flexible pricing to make it easy to start and keep playing. The experience will adapt to you, helping you customize how you play, discover what you will love, and connect with the right people. And we will be open to all creators, from individuals to the largest studios, giving everyone the tools to reach a global audience and grow their games over time”, the letter says.
Right now, though, a lot of what is in that letter is still only language without the full weight of action behind it. Retiring the Microsoft Gaming name and lowering the prices of Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass are two strong moves, but there is still a great deal left to prove. At the very least, the future of Xbox now looks a little brighter than it did before.
