It may have only been 2 months since Xbox made some major changes at the top of the corporation with Asha Sharma taking over for Phil Spencer, but so far things have gone quite well from a PR perspective. 

Prior to February 20th, we were seeing almost daily “Xbox is Dead” posts on social media and headlines. A lot of that was from people just looking to stir up engagement, but I think it’s fair to say that a lot of sentiment around Xbox from their fanbase was at an all-time low.

Many fans of the console business specifically had felt abandoned. The games were (mostly) no longer exclusive and the focus for Xbox seemed to be on everything except the console. The “This Is An Xbox” ad was negatively received, and while Xbox Play Anywhere is a great initiative, it was still more about playing Xbox games everywhere else.

Xbox would try to reassure people that another console was coming, but many simply didn’t believe it for whatever reason. Fans felt like their voices weren’t being heard. Xbox Fan Fest had been canceled, Xbox executives were far less engaged online with the community than they had been in the past. Things weren’t looking too good. 

New Regime, New Beginnings

Looking at how things stand today, just 2 months later, and the narrative is much different. Xbox Fan Fest is back. Xbox isn’t just casually mentioning their next console, Project Helix, they are actively promoting it. Suddenly Xbox executives like Aaron Greenberg have opened up their socials again and interacting with the community. They are making changes to the achievement system that fans have screamed about for years. There’s excitement about the brand again.

It remains to be seen how much Asha Sharma is willing to change for the company. Phil Spencer in my opinion was a good executive who saw the brand falling behind PlayStation and tried to do some drastic things to fix it but ultimately, they did more harm than good, at least for the console. 

But for now, the early changes are working to give the brand a boost and you have to give her credit for that. Everything she’s done up to this point has been positively received.

These of course are the small things that they are getting right, but questions remain on the big stuff. Those bigger decisions of course take much more time. Will she go as far as to bring back exclusives for example? Far too early to say, but I think the answer to that is no longer a straight up “no” like it would have been previously. 

What About Game Pass?

Also what changes, if any, will be made to Xbox Game Pass. I think Xbox Game Pass has three issues at the moment. It’s too expensive, there’s too many tiers that complicate things, and it kills game sales on the platform more often than it helps sales.

There’s been rumors out there about them adding more tiers, changing the tiers, moving Call Of Duty, teaming up with Netflix and many more (this is why we don’t cover rumors, which one is real if any). I think they should simply go to one tier at a reasonable price, that takes care of 2 of those issues. If you have Game Pass, you simply have Game Pass. Or at the very least go back to just 2 with an Ultimate and Standard.

The more complicated issue is the game sales issue. I’ll be the first to admit I ate up Spencer’s insistence that Game Pass helped games sell more and I was wrong for that. Game Pass definitely helps a lot of games get more exposure which can lead to more game sales. I think last year’s Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a great example of that. But for many, more established games, and especially first party games, it hurts more than it helps.

As cool as it is to say a game has 10 million players, I think saying it sold 5 million sounds better for your overall business. I think the only way we ever see Xbox games go exclusive again is if the first party games sell more on Xbox. And the only way that happens, is removing day 1 from Game Pass. It’s a tough reversal, but I think do able. 

Proceed With Caution

The one thing I do want to caution Xbox with here going forward is falling into previous traps, specifically with the community. As mentioned earlier, I think it is fantastic that they are listening to and interacting with the community once again. Xbox does that better than pretty much any video game company out there, and certainly better than PlayStation and Nintendo.

However there is something to be said about who they listen to and how they go about things. I understand they want the community engaged, and they want the fans with the biggest voices. But don’t go down the path again of the “super fan/creator”. Those voices tend to hurt things more than they help. No person or company should be listening to people who are either 100% positive, or negative.

We’ve all seen it from Xbox, giving some of these creators too much access and making them think they are basically on team green. It’s not healthy. On the flip side I’ve seen firsthand them give access to PlayStation creators who literally don’t create content for their games. The only content they do is “thanks Xbox for the code” and then never talk the game again. 

Again, this is very opposite to what PlayStation and Nintendo do, as both companies are extremely difficult to get access with, but there should be a middle ground there. Engage with the community, work with those who are actively trying to make that community and your brand better, but don’t overreach in hopes to “buy” support.

A lot of these specific changes take a lot more time to implement than the things that Asha and the new team have already begun doing. I think the June showcase will give us a pretty good indication of what bigger changes we may see for Xbox. For now though, they’ve checked all the right boxes to getting things back on track and as a long time Xbox fan, that gives me a lot of hope.