Microsoft scraps Microsoft Gaming for Xbox only

After announcing that Microsoft would be slashing Game Pass prices, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has announced during a town hall all-hands meeting that the company is shedding the ‘Microsoft Gaming’ moniker, and is instead bringing back Xbox, putting the brand’s identity front and centre in a way that it has not in recent years.

As reported by The Verge, Microsoft Gaming came to be in 2022 when the division revealed it wanted to acquire Activision Blizzard King. At this time, Microsoft Gaming, as it was known, was under the stewardship of Phil Spencer, who recently resigned, with Sharma taking his place.

Speaking of the change, Sharma said that “Xbox needs to be our identity”.

Sharma promised a “return of Xbox”, and this call to action has started to appear all over the Microsoft Campus.

Not only that, but there appears to be a new Xbox logo, which harkens back to the original Xbox and Xbox 360 logos, making it something of a statement of intent.

Recently, Radio Times Gaming were flown to Los Angeles to attend the launch party of a new Fanta flavour, Crimson Sour Cherry, released in collaboration with Xbox, which further signals confidence in the brand going forward.

When Sharma was appointed, she was initially met with scepticism, as she comes from an AI background, and online commenters were quick to try and point out a perceived lack of ‘gamer credentials’, and what they thought to be ‘suspicious’ account behaviour, in that it seemed it wasn’t just Sharma using her account.

To alleviate any fears, Sharma said that it was her family playing games and went on the record to say that "we will not flood our ecosystem with soulless AI slop".

This is all in the midst of beleaguered hardware sales, and Call of Duty not performing as well as it once did, making the multi-billion-dollar investment seem short-sighted in retrospect, even if we are getting a CoD movie.

So far, there have only been positive signals coming from Xbox, including more details emerging about the next-generation Xbox, dubbed ‘Project Helix’.

Sharma has also called into question the perceived benefits of moving away from console exclusivity, with Bethesda’s Starfield the latest to make the jump to the PlayStation 5.

Of course, the proof is in the pudding, and there is some time yet until we see the next Xbox, but certainly, the line-up of upcoming Xbox games, such as Forza Horizon 6, Gears of War: E-Day and Fable, all look extremely promising.

However, these were set in motion many years ago, and so it may be a good while yet until we see the fruit of the newly minted Xbox Gaming labours come to bear.

Perhaps we could see a world where The Elder Scrolls 6 is an Xbox exclusive, much like Morrowind was in 2002, though this was for performance reasons more than anything else.

We at Radio Times Gaming will, of course, be bringing you all the latest during this turbulent time for Xbox, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, so be sure to subscribe to our newsletter to keep up to date!

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