Xbox ‘not built to just be a publisher’ says new boss as next gen reveal teased

Xbox Series X and S consoles key art — New year, new CEO (Microsoft)

The new leaders of Xbox have rejected the idea of becoming a third party publisher, as they promise a new console announcement soon.

Microsoft’s management shake-up within its Xbox division raises many questions about the brand’s future, but the key one is whether it will pursue its current ‘play anywhere’ strategy.

In the wake of tepid Xbox Series X/S sales, Xbox has pivoted to becoming a multi-platform publisher, by emphasising the role of its streaming service Xbox Game Pass across other devices, and launching first party titles on PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch.

This strategy, according to reports, was largely spearheaded by former bosses Phil Spencer and Sarah Bond. However, with new CEO Asha Sharma promising ‘the return of Xbox’ in her introductory statements, there’s a sense they’re intending to rewind the clock.

In a new interview with Windows Central, the newly promoted Matt Booty, who is now Xbox’s executive vice president and chief content officer, expressed a similar sentiment by rejecting the idea of Xbox devolving into just a publisher.

‘Our studio system is fully built around being first party,’ Booty said. ‘We’re not built to be just a publisher. It is core to our partnership with the Microsoft platform, being involved in early hardware decisions – all the work we’ve done to get games like Gears Of War running great on new devices like the Xbox Ally, and so on.

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‘It is embedded within our structure, we’re not backing away from that. We’re committed to being a first party games publisher in partnership with our first party platform team.’

However, the message becomes muddled when taking into account comments from Sharma, who stated, ‘the plan’s the plan until it’s not the plan’ – when it comes to revising Xbox’s strategy.

‘Right now, I need to learn, candidly,’ Sharma said. ‘About the ‘why’ of these decisions, what we were optimising for, and what the data says about the Xbox strategy today. That’s the honest answer. I’m looking at lifetime value, not just what happened in a previous moment, or in short term efficiencies and things like that. The plan’s the plan until it’s not the plan.’

While Sharma has only been in the role for a few days in an official capacity, it’s not exactly a reassuring response considering, as noted in Phil Spencer’s exit statement, she’s been preparing to take on the role ‘over the past several months’.

Elsewhere, Sharma did say we will hear more about the next Xbox console ‘soon’, adding: ‘I am committed to ‘returning to Xbox’, and that starts with console, that starts with hardware. You will hear more about that soon, we’ll have some announcements coming up. You will see us collectively investing here.

‘We also know that there are a lot of players who aren’t on console or our hardware, and I want to deliver great games to them too. I need to learn more about what that can look like, what decisions were made, what we need to do going forward, and I want a little bit of time and space to do that.’

If anything, it sounds like they’re trying to please everybody as they try and nail down what they’re actually going to do. However, whether Xbox can afford to have ‘time and space’ to figure things out, when console sales are dropping to record lows, is the key question.

Based on the word of former Microsoft execs, the next Xbox console is a PC hybrid of some kind, which will be a ‘very premium, very high-end curated experience’.

It’s unclear when the next Xbox will launch, but the worldwide RAM shortage is threatening to delay both Microsoft and Sony’s next gen plans, with the latter apparently considering launching the PlayStation 6 as late as 2029.