Xbox to 'Reevaluate Approach to Exclusivity' in New 'We are Xbox' Mission Statement - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 23 April 2026 / 4,405 Views
Xbox CEO Asha Sharma and Xbox executive vice president and chief content officer Matt Booty in a new message - "We Are Xbox" - sent to Team Xbox employees have outlined a new mission statement.
The message reveals multiple changes that includes the company name changing from "Microsoft Gaming" back to "Xbox" and a reevaluation of Xbox exclusives.
The new leadership does understand that "players are frustrated" due to a lack of new console features and a presence on PC that needs to be stronger. They understand pricing has been confusing of late for the average person to keep up with and everything across Xbox is "too fragmented."
Sharma and Booty will focus on four priorities that need improving - hardware, content, experience, and services.
Read the full message below:
Dear team,
Xbox has always been different.
We started with a simple idea. Games should bring people together through shared experiences. That led to the first Xbox in 2001, Xbox Live in 2002, and new ways to connect, from friends lists and achievements to parties and play across devices. Today, Xbox reaches over 500 million players around the world, with some of the most important franchises in entertainment.
From the beginning, Xbox was built by people willing to try things that others wouldn’t. We placed a consumer bet inside an enterprise company because we believed gaming would define the living room, and we were at risk of missing it.
That spirit has carried us through the last 25 years, and it is required to carry us forward.
We have work to do
Players are frustrated.
New feature drops on console have been less frequent. Our presence on PC isn’t strong enough. Pricing is getting harder for people to keep up with. And core experiences like search, discovery, social, and personalization still feel too fragmented. Developers and publishers are asking for more, too: better tools, better insights, and a platform that helps them grow faster.
At the same time, a new generation of players is coming online with different expectations. Their time is split across games, media, and everything else competing for attention. They expect more content in familiar places, want to shape the worlds they play in, and want to create and socialize together, not just play together.
These changes are happening as the industry reshapes around us.
Console remains large and stable. Windows now represents more players and more hours and is increasingly where competition is most intense. Players have access to more games than ever, even as the cost and time to build blockbuster titles continues to rise, putting pressure on what gets made and how risk is taken. Some of the biggest recent hits are coming from small teams or even single creators, and places like Roblox are producing experiences that rival major franchises in scale. More players are also choosing subscriptions and services as their primary way to play, with expectations set around instant access, ongoing value, and libraries that evolve continuously.
The industry is becoming global and competitive. More than half of the market’s revenue, players, and growth are happening outside of our core markets. But the rest of the world is not just a large market. Developers there are increasingly competing with the most established Western studios, combining scale, speed, and a willingness to reinvent genres many once considered mature.
The model that got us here won’t be the one that takes us forward.
Xbox will be where the world plays
What does Xbox become in this next era?
Xbox will be where the world plays and creates. We will build a global platform that connects players and creators everywhere. 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.
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. And we will be open to all creators, from individuals to the largest studios, giving anyone the tools to reach a global audience and keep their games growing over time.
Our new north star will be daily active players.
We will execute this through four priorities: hardware, content, experience, and services.
Hardware
- 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
Content
- Grow and extend an enduring portfolio of franchises players love
- Evolve our 3P partnerships and strengthen our 5-year slate
- Expand into China, emerging markets, and mobile-first audiences
- Maintain and grow in live games and long-term stewardship
- Elevate creator-centric platforms like Minecraft, The Elder Scrolls, and Sea of Thieves
Experience
- Fix the fundamentals for players and partners
- Make Xbox the best place for developers and creators to build and grow
- Overhaul discovery, customization, social and personalization to connect the community
Services
- Fortify Game Pass with clear differentiation and sustainable economics
- Return the business to durable growth with strong cost discipline
- Make cloud play feel native, fast, and reliable across TVs and low-cost devices
- Use M&A deliberately to accelerate growth where organic paths are too slow
Along the way, we will reevaluate our approach to exclusivity, windowing, and AI, and share more as we learn and decide.
We are Xbox
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.
We are a high agency culture where wild and wonderful ideas thrive. Our job is not to smooth over our differences, but to connect everyone into something greater than any one studio or product.
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:
- Earn every player
- Protect our art
- Stay rebellious
- Progress over perfection
- Signal over ceremony
- Core before more
- Outwork the problem
- Speed is learning
- Makers over managers
- Clarity is kindness
Over the last five years, Xbox and the industry have been through an unimaginable amount of change, and this team has continued to deliver through it for our community. Thank you for staying focused on what matters. 62 days in, we’re proud of how we’ve honored our commitments of great games, return of Xbox, and future of play. We’re here to do the most creative and courageous work of our lives, and that’s what we’ll do together.
With gratitude,
Matt & Asha
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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Good. If Sony wants to playball now that they know Xbox can play PC games, then Microsoft should hit them back where it hurts. Make ES6 exclusive to Xbox and PC.
I could see them moving to timed exclusive on Xbox/PC for single-player games. Wait a couple of years before releasing them on PlayStation and/or Nintendo. While multiplayer / live service games launch day one on other consoles.
Microsoft wants to and needs to make money. That is unlikely to happen.
Its not that black and white. If too many players leave the Xbox ecosystem-system do to all Xbox games being muti-platform, then MS would lose money due to losing out of the fee from purchases on Xbox storefronts.
Imho, maybe it's too late for Xbox consoles:
They stop with Playstation > They lose a massive amount of money. Likely not sustainable.
They open to Steam > They lose even more money, cause most people will want to buy things from Steam Store.
They open to all PC stores, except Steam > Their product becomes irrelevant. A "Console like PC" that can't use Steam is almost laughtable.
It's not going to be easy for team Xbox. They need a path that makes a competitive console and allows for a beneficial coexistence with Steam.
Imho, they will fail. Xbox future is streaming and publishing, not console gaming.
It's already too late for Xbox. 35 million units isn't enough to sustain first party exclusives. They need PS5 customers to buy their games in order to recoup dev costs. Nobody but Nintendo has been able to make sub-40 million console sales work for more than a single console generation. Sega went bankrupt halfway through the Dreamcast. 360 had a huge comeback over the OG Xbox. Wii and Switch both saved Nintendo.
Again, it's just too late for Xbox to do anything other than slowly transform into an irrelevant "also ran" to PC, PlayStation, and Nintendo.
Than we just don't play those games on our Playstation, somehow I think we'll be fine.
It will be a massive hit for ESVI Sales. Terrible move, imho.
Best path for Xbox is to expand to new markets and focus on being a console/PC publisher. They will only make things worse playing "wannabe" console holder and losing potential sales.
Current XBOX just can't fight Steam and Playstation.
"Our new north star will be daily active players"
They're not dropping Playstation if this is their new goal.
Right, and likewise they haven´t announced any change from their sky high profit margin goals.
There is just no way to come close to reaching that without selling to all platforms.
But why not play corporate word games to sell Xbox die-hards some new definition of exclusivity?
They can sell people an exclusive marketing combo with Discord.
They can sell people an exclusive marketing combo with Burger King. etc.
That can jack up their numbers.
It isn´t growing core gaming product, but it´s finding adjacent opportunities which leverage it.
That´s the M&A in ¨Services¨ (which isn´t under gaming Content).
That´s what businesses do when they give up on growth in their core business.
That´s what you do if you plan on spinning off a subsidiary when the market improves.
I can only see them doing timed Xbox and PC only for about 6-12 months then release games on Playstation and Nintendo. Other than that I cannot see it happening.
At best they do an exclusive window. I doubt they do anything beyond that.
If Xbox wants to seriously compete in console hardware, and thereby console storefront, their only option is to heavily subsidize the next generation of consoles, so that they can handily beat Sony on price. That seems highly unlikely though. So, my assumption is that they will just ride out the console market for as long as they can with their existing fan base (probably one more generation), and over that time transform into a publisher and streaming service provider. That is what they seem to have been doing over the last several years, and it's the only thing that I see making sense for them to do moving forward.
Xbox 360 is back baby!
They've done 180 after 180!
They drop PS or Nintendo I guarantee PS and Nintendo would never let them back on the platform.
And to counter all Sony and Nintendo have to do is start locking down 3rd party exclusives, which worked before.
While saying they need to expand and they need way more presence on PC, that lead me to think they will move to more day one multiplats rather than going back to exclusivity.
Microsoft has been doing 180s nonstop since Xbox One but somehow the media seems to be convinced that this is the one thing they will never revert.. facepalm..
If they want to be relevant again they should stop releasing games on other platforms and PC. Go full Xbox exclusives, except for stuff like Minecraft and Age of Empires, which are best suited for PC, and Call of Duty, which they have already committed to release on competing hardware.
Other than that, fully Xbox exclusivity is the way to go. Want the new Halo? Get an Xbox. Want the new Gears? Get an Xbox. Want the new Elder Scrolls? Get an Xbox. Want the new Doom? Get and Xbox. Want the new Spyro? Get an Xbox.
"We are Xbox"? I thought everything was Xbox? Where's Halo for my Samsung Smart fridge Microsoft?
"We Are Xbox ... for now, anyway. Expect a completely new direction in a couple of years."
If Xbox wants to survive as a brand it needs exclusives.
Fantastic. The latest move of this and the distancing itself from "Microsoft Gaming" suggests to me that the plan now is to strengthen Xbox, and allow it to be healthy long-term and be able to stand on its own. Xbox doesn't need to generate the absolute maximum revenue for Microsoft, what matters now most is the health of Xbox.
I think if they do return to exclusives, then it is good to have more competition back among the platform holders.
The question remains:
Is Xbox capable of making exclusives again? Will new/returning users strengthen Xbox enough?
I don't believe in the return of console exclusivity. Xbox's user base has become tiny, and the lack of sales on Playstation will be severely felt. I mean, the Playstation user base is almost 3 times larger and growing! They will be giving up a very large volume of sales, potentially 20%~30%, maybe more...
Just to mention, it's a completely different situation from Playstation's withdrawal from PC. Xbox won't be dealing with a sacrifice of just 2~4% of revenue; the losses will be much greater. But that's just the beginning; they will also have another problem.
After sacrificing sales/profit, they will have to win over "new/returning users to Xbox." The number of people adopting Xbox and buying from their store will have to be massive, and there's no guarantee that it will happen. As Phil Spencer himself said, "...It's just not true that if we go off and build great games, all of a sudden you're going to see console share shift in some dramatic way...". With the current market, some users "choosing Xbox" because of "a few exclusives" won't be enough.
Furthermore, the "supposed" opening to the Steam store will likely make the Xbox store even less attractive. It will devour even more Xbox sales/profits as it becomes a "glorified pre-built PC" dressed as a console.
Strong and beautiful words, but they don't offer any solution... Xbox will need to sell everywhere possible, especially on PlayStation. The Xbox name is back, but everything will continue to function as MS Gaming. A miracle is needed for Xbox to return to the glory of Xbox 360.
I’ll see it when I believe it… once I start seeing “Xbox Exclusive” without PC, then I’ll be convinced. This messaging gives me a ton of hope, but I’d rather keep a level-head for the moment.
I doubt they will drop PC. Exclusivity likely means Xbox console exclusive along with a PC release.
Ah that's nothing then... well, nothing for PC gamers at least. Shifting away from PS is a good call though. Prioritizing the Xbox ecosystem is how it should've always been.
We are xbox, we will take away the biggest franchise on day 1 game pass going forward lol
MS needs that Playstation money. And MS shareholders wants that money too.
