We Are Xbox - Asha Sharma And Matt Booty's Message To The Teams (Xbox Wire)

Gaming
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It could be the pressure was too much on top of many speculated reasons, let alone this one. I think Phil counted on Sarah to handle one of the tasks that ended up as a failure (at least according to reports). I think the change came around the same time as what seems to be Microsoft itself going through a phase of change, including windows itself. But maybe Phil wasn’t in it anymore, so they get someone who can be up to the task. Not to mention, the layout is already made, so Asha just has to pick up where they left off and repair the damages.

Again, this is all speculation.

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I mean that was like 2 years after ABK closed and that was a massive aquisition. Xbox did MASSIVE growth under Phil. Then they supercharged it and there was a big breath that had to be taken as they properly integrated everything (that’s why Microsoft Gaming even existed and they had to keep it for a while because the courts wanted the ABK aquisition to easy to divest in the short term) and on top of that had to deal with a Microsoft that suddenly was gung-ho on AI along with an entire economy that was dealing with AI driven shortages and rising costs. Stood still is honestly “fine” when you’ve just made your company’s biggest aquisition ever. A lot of companies STRUGGLE to make an aquistion of that size even work. The best example I think of is AT&T and WB. AT&T bought WB for a similar amount as Microsoft bought ABK, but AT&T couldn’t make that aquisition work. In like less than 5 years they spun WB off and straddled them with debt. Now WB is flailing around, failing, and begging to get bought by another company. That easily could have happened with ABK.

Plus, I mean, all this stuff came into being under Phil and Sarah. Helix didn’t appear overnight. PC, Cloud, Mobile, and Xbox Everywhere ambitions are literally what Phil and Sarah had been known for. Game Pass and cloud gaming especially did. Xbox hasn’t been doing nothing for the past couple of years and certainly not the whole tenure, but they were working with tighter resources and being very market respondent.

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I think the biggest difference is that Sharma is clearly stating everything Xbox is trying to do and is working on. I don’t think even Phil has EVER done that. Like obviously Helix didn’t come out of nowhere. We know Cloud, PC, and Mobile were being worked on and were major growth area goals for Phil and Sarah. They’ve made their content pipeline better than ever, and all these shows had to have been made well in advance.

Xbox went silent in 2022. 2023 was better but they struggled to juggle the ABK case. Then in 2024 Phil and senior leadership suddenly had to integrate one of the biggest gaming publishers period while they were still ingegrating Zenimax. Then it was the freaking awful AI push and massive cost increases. And Microsoft themselves being much more frugal as they tried to grow and compete in market cap. I think they were just busy internally. Really busy. And if we’re just looking at post ABK then it’s only been like 2 years and Phil was probably looking to pass the baton last year so even less time. An aquistion is never as simple as “you + me = we”. There’s so much to do with logistics and reducing redundancy and like everything. I think they’re all happy to be (mostly) done with it. And it is good timing. Xbox can go into Helix as a much stronger united company. The difference between Xbox now and Xbox in 2016 (10 years ago) is beyond night and day. They had just started Xbox Play Anywhere and Game Pass and were still recovering from Matrick.

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It’s crazy that my friends who are very casual gamers that play on PlayStation are talking about this . It feels the first time in forever that many eyes are on Xbox

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Many outlets are reporting about it, even the ones that are only focusing on movies and entertainment like tv series. Even the gossip ones. I saw some stores that sell oversea products saying, “is Xbox back?” The new logo design got over 2 million activity and over 80k likes. The spark is there.

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After reading up on all this stuff, im only going to say one thing as it’s the one thing that is my most important aspect of Xbox and that’s Microsoft published games being day one on Game Pass Ultimate. I have GPU through July 2028 and games being day one on the service will determine what I do as a consumer come July 2028. If Call of Duty is the ONLY game that isn’t day one, then fine, im not going to make a huge deal out of one game.

I’ll just wait the year to play the COD campaigns. But if other games such as Fable or Gears of War: E-Day or future games like The Elder Scrolls VI isn’t day one on Game Pass Ultimate then I will be done with Xbox because the biggest benefit Microsoft gives me IS their published games on Game Pass Ultimate day one and if that goes away, there’s not really anything else to that level for me on Xbox.

As of now, it’s all a wait and see for me. I just hope I don’t lose what is by far the biggest benefit to me as an Xbox consumer, gamer and fan.

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See in the UK I’m barely seeing anything and we’re the second biggest market for Xbox by some metrics (I think).

I’ve noticed mainstream media outlets here often seem to do articles on negative Xbox news, but none have covered this nor the Game Pass change yet.

It’s possible we’ll see it today as they do sometimes take their time and get consumer and industry analyst quotes…

Anyway I’m hoping it does as they’ve all been quick to jump on negative news - and I fear all this, they’ll only focus on losing CoD as that’s what the casuals in the UK will click on to read

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One small concern, I’m hoping Xbox realise they’re not just playing to the US gaming echo chamber (which I’ll admit Asha is playing a blinder with, quite a few seem to be fanatical cheerleaders already) and include media and gamers in the rest of the world.

The Game Pass announcement had zero other currencies mentioned (when in the past they’d cover a few key ones) and the notifications and emails about it appear to have only gone to US accounts only so far.

Too much concentration on the USA was a previous criticism of Xbox (and became embarrassingly clear when the price rise had to be delayed in some jurisdictions as they’d only checked with US lawyers and not whether you can do immediate price rises in the EU and elsewhere), and I admit I ignored it as I can of course read the US announcements plus the UK was often still included, but it’s short sighted if this continues as the biggest growth areas are likely to be outside America…

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Well the announcement said they want to expand into China and emerging markets better. In theory they also realize they also have a lot of work to do in other established global gaming markets (like all of Europe or Japan).

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I feel somewhat the same. I do wonder if they through the rumored pick your plan make pretty much everything day one but separately to the point that if you have to get everything you were getting with COD it could cost you over 30 maybe 40 dollars would you be okay with that.

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I doubt any option would have CoD, as you could just add that option for a month, play the new CoD then remove it again - meaning instead of $40 a month for a year they only got an extra say $10/20 one off from you

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I absolutely hate the “pick your plan” setup because it’s basically going to be more expensive. The base tier would be little and cheap but once you start adding in stuff, it will end up costing you more. I’m not a fan of trying to copy Cable with a billion different packages. If anything, it turns people off because it becomes cumbersome and more expensive.

I paid $15 a month for Ultimate in Summer 2024 for three years when the price got increased to $20. I added a year this past Fall when GameStop had Ultimate for $20 a month while it was already increased to $30 so I have never paid the increased prices.

I wouldn’t have minded the $30 a month as long as COD is included because the extra $10 a month would be 7 months of Game Pass Ultimate compared to if I bought the game instead. The 7 months of Game Pass Ultimate is more valuable to me than buying COD for $70 would be.

Imagine the base price being $10 and every additional game added is $10 or something like that so for example, in 2026, I have Halo, Gears, Fable and COD. I would be paying $50 a month in this scenario. It would be a massive ripoff.

I’m tired of Microsoft buying studios and publishers and then people will say that it costs a lot of money to run all of them and everything. Well, maybe they should have thought that out beforehand. It’s not my fault. I never asked for ABK and outside of the annual COD, they don’t have anything new coming any time soon. It’s almost as if it’s the consumers fault for their decisions and stupidity. It’s not. It’s their fault.

Microsoft is a $4T dollar company and they need to stop crying. Maybe they shouldn’t have spent $80B or whatever the hell it was on AI or $70B on ABK. Like, stop trying to blame consumers when we have no control over any of that.

For me, if they screw up Game Pass, I believe that will be what truly ends Xbox because those who are on Xbox are on it because of Game Pass, outside of those who play the same 2-3 multi-player games every year. And from my point of view, if I don’t have Game Pass, well, Microsoft then becomes Sony and Nintendo where I don’t get anything of value whatsoever.

At this point, just have to wait and see what happens.

On a side note: it’s amazing how Asha is doing all this stuff and Nadella seems to have given her total control or some shit but yet, for the last two years Phil couldn’t get shit despite the fact that he was the one who saved Xbox after Mattrick killed it in 2013. You’re telling me that Phil couldn’t just do the same as what Asha has done the last months? I really don’t get it. But whatever.

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I’m mostly expecting the “pick and choose” would be more additional stuff on top of the base tiers - similar to what Sky offers in the UK and I’m guessing cable companies do in the US.

For example, Disney Plus and Netflix, both with ads, are included in my Sky sub - but I can pay the difference from that base ad tier to a higher one.

So for example, if they offered a way to upgrade the EA Play or Ubi Classics sub to the Day 1 versions just by paying the difference, I’d likely do it.

I imagine others might be discounts on their own subs like WoW etc.

I just can’t see otherwise the pick and mix approach would change much - people complain about EA Play or Ubi Classics but they likely cost little to nothing, while perks and stuff like Fortnite bucks likely cost Microsoft nothing as they’re advertising offers basically.

For example those 3 month Discord Nitro or Spotify offers for new subscribers cost Xbox nothing - you can get them practically everywhere on mobile phone provider loyalty programs, supermarket loyalty programs, even on the subscription pages themselves.

So removing perks or some old EA / Ubi games are not going to impact the price much - I think people thinking pick and mix means removing those and saving 5 or 10 quid on Ultimate are going to be very disappointed

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It just better & better, Asha is so much better than Bond & it showing in just a few months

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Makes me wonder, what the hell was happening under the last leadership? Even when they did great things they never did this type of fun marketing that gives the brand an identity, like PlayStation often knows how to do, Arsha either understands Xbox or just surrounded herself with people who do.

https://www.reddit.com/r/xbox/comments/1su2p8h/xbox_has_revealed_their_new_bright_green_logo/

Like this right here goes a long way to give the brand an identity.

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I believe Asha knows strongly about reputation breathes excellence and profit. The thing is she didn’t know much on gaming. Rather than guessing or feel that the intention is on point, she likely held a meeting with Matt Booty and others to give her an idea. I believe the report did indicate Bond was hard to work with, so with her departure, it gave a new life.

I think Asha did plenty of research internally from devs and workers, then with social media, and perhaps survey. Maybe she even tested by playing games earlier with friends and family to get the sense of what they want. Once she gets it, she can execute the new push with her specialty, which seems to be marketing according to those who knew her.

I don’t know what happened to the last leadership. It is possible they got to the point where they have to work on things that are not their skill. For instance, Phil did an impressive job to recover Xbox from identity crisis alas multimedia push. Then they got more studios, more games, and more consumer friendly. Now that Xbox gotten huge, a new problem arise, starting with marketing.

It is possible that those got lost in the shuffle. Bond was tasked with that and it ended up crashing to many fans with the feeling of no need to buy a console. There are other problems as well, so I think it gotten to the point that their specialty is not warranted anymore, since they acquired many studios, and it’s time to make it feel special. It’s why we have the choice for a new president.

When you think about it, we’re back to identity crisis but instead of due to being seen as multimedia machine, it’s due to being a gaming publication. On one hand, that still lands on Phil and his focus; on the other hand, it is leaving the platform that made it co-exist. This is where Asha can work on. Make Xbox feel, look, and treated as important. The other idea about expansion, the platform not the games, are perfectly fine, but it was being treated as primary rather than secondary. Sure, some will use only handheld or even cloud gaming, but marketing wise, you still have to make the console the one and only.

I am willing to trust her to steer the ship to the rightful path. What new problem comes is a mystery, but what we have now need to be fix now.

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This isn’t specifically Satya Nadella giving Asha more freedom than Phil; there has been a wider sweeping change at Microsoft to revitalize the consumer facing businesses. Plus it could very well be that Phil had his hands more tied up integrating ABK and Asha only came in once things were more stable. Nothing Asha is doing is being started from the ground up. Like Helix wasn’t made this year. She’s just executing Xbox’s strategy with the foundation that already exists.

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The last leadership did a fantastic job building Xbox up. But Phil was never a trained marketer and Sarah was brought on board to build up Xbox’s partnerships and innovate on the long term vision. They did this well. Xbox is now like one of the biggest gaming businesses period no matter what anyone says. All the showcases and reveals were made through the work of the last leadership. So was the expansion into cloud, subscription gaming, PC, and even Helix. Now Xbox needs a leader who can take all of that and really execute on it. Sharma is trained marketer and she’s showing that.

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Change can be good. New ideas and new energy. Xbox needed it. However, I’m a bit surprised at the what was prior leadership doing takes.

  • Bethesda acquisition
  • ABK acquisition
  • Cloud infrastructure up and running
  • Got a handheld out the door
  • Convergence of console/pc with Helix tee’d up
  • Mobile store in there somewhere
  • Navigated what seemed to be unreasonable parent co financial mandate

All of these things would fall under Asha’s We are Xbox item 6. Core before more. It’s an incredible foundation for the new leadership to build upon.

Really hope she can keep the momentum going. The positive buzz has been just crazy. And the June showcase is just around the corner!

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I watched the person I followed and his take on it. The one thing I do think it should be highlighted more is the blunt and straightforward message she has been making so far. The phrase “exclusive case by case” irked many to this day. Asha seems to be more in your face on what they want to do.

It’s funny because I witnessed someone doing a dance around because of the feeling, which can be detrimental. For example, a contractor told you they won’t clear out the mold until a month later despite you paid them to do it today. Your partner will tell you to tell them that it is unacceptable, only for you to say, “That is…un-nice of you.” You can see the difference.

Asha was blunt about generative AI is bad for gaming, even being in a parent company focusing on it. She’s blunt about Xbox have many problems and fans being frustrated is among them. Whenever the answer is made for exclusivity, I believe she will flat out tell you what’s what.