Last week, Xbox published a manifesto that they sent internally to all teams from the new CEO Asha Sharma and CCO Matt Booty. The letter received a whole lot of praise, but when I read it, I was left scratching my head.

"The model that got us here won’t be the one that takes us forward."

And yet...

"Console is at the foundation, delivering a premium experience, and cloud brings that experience to any device. You can play where you want, and your games, progress, friends, and identity stay with you across console, PC, mobile, and cloud.

...it sounds like...

Our new north star will be daily active players.

...the same plan...

To achieve our master plan, the way we work must transform.

Our best work happens when the full stack moves together. 'Microsoft Gaming' describes our structure but it does not describe our ambition. So, we are going back to where we started and changing our team’s name.

We are Xbox."

...of the past decade?

Am I crazy?

In 2023, Phil Spencer said to Kinda Funny:

"The console is the core of the Xbox brand…"

In the same interview Phil said,

"Play the games you want, with the people you want, anywhere you want. We want Xbox to be something that people who buy our console can feel like they are a member of."

And here is Phil talking about finding more players in 2020:

“More people playing is a good thing. We have to be careful. If you view the gaming world as a fixed pie. If you say there are only 200 million people who will buy a gaming console in any gaming generation, then in order to grow the business we have to get more per user. If it’s a fixed number of players and it’s about how you monetize each minute someone is playing, I think that’s dangerous for us as an industry. I think we have to find new players and new methods of monetization to open up those player bases. And that’s a great path to growth.”

What was the impetus for Game Pass and buying Mojang Studios and Bethesda and Activision/Blizzard/King for a rough total of $78.7~ billion dollars (before legal fees) if not for more "daily active players?" Wasn't the whole point of Game Pass and xCloud so "you can play where you want, and your games, progress, friends, and identity stay with you across console, PC, mobile, and cloud."? Isn't that what the ill-fated and recently killed "This Is An Xbox" campaign was meant to convey?

And then they have the marketing audacity to say:

"Xbox will be built to be affordable, personal, and open. We will offer flexible pricing so it’s easy to get started and keep playing. The experience will adapt to you, letting you customize how you play, helping you find what you’ll love, and connecting you with the right people."

Does anyone else remember "Xbox All Access," which was a part of the Series console launch where folks could do a payment plan with the console and Game Pass? I do.

"The other piece to the financial puzzle is Xbox’s installment plans (dubbed “Xbox All Access”) for the new consoles. For $25/month for the Series S and $35/month for the Series X, consumers can get the the latest console plus Game Pass, which includes all Xbox first party games and plenty of third party options. There is no up front cost and 0% APR. In two years, the console is theirs and they can chose whether or not to keep the Game Pass subscription, currently $15/month."

It seems to have been discontinued and replaced with flexible payments from PayPal, but this language says to me that this type of consumer arrangement is coming back in the face of ever increasing prices. 1

The letter goes on to describe four priorities required to execute their direction toward the daily active player north star—hardware, content, experience, and services. The hardware bullet list in particular stands out to me.

  • Stabilize Gen9 as a healthy and high-quality base 
  • Deliver Project Helix to lead in performance and play your console and PC games
  • Lead in comfortable, personal, high-performance accessories
  • Build a strong ecosystem that expands choice and reach

If I may attempt a rough translation,

  • These Series consoles aren't going away.
  • Project Helix is going to cost a small fortune.
  • We will still make infinite custom controllers and sweepstakes consoles.
  • More handheld PC partners

In an interview with Stephen Totilo, Asha said this about Gen9 and its longevity:

“We have formed a team (and) we’re investing in console features,” Sharma said. “We are standing up the muscle to make sure that all of our performance and reliability and quality is great. We are investing in it as a first-class experience again, and we want to make sure that all the players who want to be on Gen 9 are on Gen 9 with a great console with regular updates.”

She teased that there were more updates coming, but didn’t want to get ahead of their announcements. “I think that the Gen 9 is a great piece of hardware, and we want to make sure that gameplay and the platform experience is excellent. We know we just haven’t invested as much there and so we’re getting back to that.”

When I combine all this talk with Xbox being "affordable" in the face of component shortages, it just reminds me of this Xbox classic.

In some semblance of a defense for Asha and team, she did say the following in that same interview:

“I think, historically, our pricing hasn’t been as flexible,” she said. “And I think that’s the big thing we want to go work on. You saw that with Game Pass. It had become too expensive. So we took a step to address that.”

She added: “I want to continue to make sure, as we build hardware, software, services, we’re spending just as much time on performance and play time as we are on making sure that we can innovate to offer more affordable devices and hardware and services. And so, look, there’s a reality to the market that we’re in, so there’s no promises around what the price points are or anything like that. But I want to make sure that people around the world are able to play.”

Now that to me, sounds like exploring a world where price drops return. I think they have been sorely missed.

They close out the manifesto with a top ten list, which we all know gamers love.

We have to be honest about where we are. We’re a challenger, and meeting this moment will require pace, energy, and a level of self-critique that should feel uncomfortable. At our best we: 

  1. Earn every player 
  2. Protect our art 
  3. Stay rebellious 
  4. Progress over perfection 
  5. Signal over ceremony
  6. Core before more
  7. Outwork the problem 
  8. Speed is learning
  9. Makers over managers
  10. Clarity is kindness

I think you could cut half that list out as marketing fluff. The bit about being a challenger is the most honest and accurate sentence in the piece. I'll give Asha and Matt this—they talk the talk that people seem to want to hear, but can they walk the walk?

After reading this letter, this rebrand back to "Xbox" smells more of "Facebook to Meta" type transition than a real transformation in the organization. A name change isn't going to remove the stink.

I hope they prove me wrong.

Footnotes

  1. Quite the nerve wracking checkout experience to confirm or deny this tidbit. 😅 ↩