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Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has had a busy week. Sharma held an internal town hall with Xbox employees today, just days after announcing an Xbox Game Pass price cut, commenting on the status of the Xbox mobile store, and teasing a mysterious Xbox and Discord partnership. One of the items on the agenda for the employee all-hands was scrapping Microsoft Gaming.
Sources familiar with the meeting tell me that Sharma announced that Microsoft is returning to using Xbox for its gaming division, instead of Microsoft Gaming. “Xbox needs to be our identity,” said Sharma, noting that Microsoft Gaming was a departure from that.
Microsoft originally switched to Microsoft Gaming at the same time it announced its plan to acquire Activision Blizzard in 2022. Phil Spencer was promoted to Microsoft Gaming CEO at the time, in an effort to further position Microsoft’s gaming efforts across Xbox, PC, mobile, and the cloud.
Sharma’s decision to return to the Xbox division is part of her promise of a “return of Xbox,” which increasingly looks like a way to put Xbox fans first and correct some previous strategic mistakes. Earlier this week, Sharma reversed a decision to add future Call of Duty titles to Xbox Game Pass, a decision that had originally been debated fiercely inside Microsoft and never made sense.
Microsoft has now plastered the “return of Xbox” slogan on the walls of its Xbox offices this week, along with “great games” and “future of play.” This is the same message as Sharma’s initial memo to Xbox employees in February, and part of her early work to make a mark with big decisions on Game Pass and the Xbox platform.
A new Xbox logo has also started appearing on Microsoft’s campus this week, ahead of the Xbox showcase in June. It’s a lot less flat that the current logo, with glass effects. I understand Microsoft has also been using this new logo with some of its internal Project Helix materials.