New Xbox CEO Asha Sharma confirmed today in an exclusive interview with Windows Central that the company will maintain its multiplatform strategy for now, but left the door wide open for changes down the road.
“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,” she said, adding that she needs to learn more about what decisions were made and where the strategy goes from here.
A new boss with a lot of questions
Sharma took over as CEO of Microsoft Gaming on February 20, replacing the retiring Phil Spencer, and she’s wasted no time making headlines.
In the same interview, when asked about the direction of Xbox’s strategy, she said: “Right now, I need to learn, candidly. About the ‘why’ of these decisions, what we were optimizing for, and what the data says about the Xbox strategy today. The plan’s the plan until it’s not the plan.”
That last line has been echoing across gaming forums all day, and for good reason, it’s the clearest signal yet that nothing is off the table under new leadership.
Sharma also said: “We’re going to keep meeting players where they are, the world continues to evolve and change. We’re going to make sure Xbox is a great place for developers and players.”
That sounds familiar, but the context around it has shifted. When a fan on social media asked her last week to bring back console exclusivity for Halo and Gears, she simply replied “Hear you,” and the internet ran wild with speculation.
Console first, everything else second
What makes Sharma’s position interesting is that she’s trying to hold two things at once. On one hand, she stated clearly: “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.”
On the other, she’s not pulling back from the multiplatform push that has sent Forza Horizon 5, Gears of War: Reloaded, and Indiana Jones to PlayStation, with Halo: Campaign Evolved, Fable, and Forza Horizon 6 still planned to follow.
New CCO Matt Booty also weighed in, making clear that Xbox isn’t turning into a third-party publisher: “We’re committed to being a first-party games publisher in partnership with our first-party platform team.” That’s a pointed statement from someone who knows exactly how the last couple of years have looked from the outside.
The bottom line is that Xbox is in a transition period, and Sharma herself admits she’s still doing the homework. She closed out the interview with one of the most self-aware lines from any Xbox executive in recent memory: “The work is proof over promise.”
Fans have heard a lot of promises from Xbox over the years. Now they’re waiting to see what that actually looks like.
What do you think, should Xbox go back to making exclusives, or is the multiplatform era here to stay? Drop your take in the comments!