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Comment by fakedang | Hacker News Reader

Seems like his successor does not have much of a plan either.

> In another internal email addressing staff, the new Microsoft Gaming CEO Asha Sharma gave some hints as to how the future of Xbox will look.

She outlined three commitments: "First, great games." "Second, the return of Xbox." and "Third, future of play." She went on to say that the company will continue to invest in its franchises and studios, keep Xbox spreading across platforms to reduce barriers, while also inventing "business models and new ways to play."

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Reads like the standard Nadella special, they probably share the same copilot template

it's clear they are going to continue gutting the place and spin it off

Except that Satya whined about people using the term "AI slop" and Sharma specifically uses that term in her e-mail. An interesting contradiction.

To be fair, that is a great social engineering technique to trying an win back the market.

I'll take it as a social engineering technique because that is the sector she came from and still being pushed by the CEO.

Her press release and tweets sound like someone asked AI what to say to make Xbox fans like you. I tested what it would tell me to say if I was CEO and it gave me very similar talking points.

Sounds like a concept of a plan. I was always an Xbox person instead of PlayStation, I was part of the Xbox Live beta and had so many great memories from that era. After the lack of exclusives on the Xbox Series X, their game pass shenanigans, and the horrible UX decisions over the years, the Xbox brand is trash to me. Same with Halo, what a freaking waste of an IP.

> Sounds like a concept of a plan.

It's safe to assume that her first e-mail to staff is not going to include a comprehensive breakdown of every action she plans to take.

Not saying she does or doesn't know what she's doing, but it would be weird if she went into much more detail at this point before she's even ramped up.

Would be good to provide clarity to the trenches though.

Clarity would be "you're all fired" but they cant write that, can they.

> keep Xbox spreading across platforms to reduce barriers

Read: we're not going to do console exclusives and instead we may not even make an Xbox anymore, and instead put the Xbox brand on PCs.

That's what Xbox has already been doing. New "Xbox" games run best on PS5 Pro (for consoles at least). I don't think there's a single Xbox Series exclusive, everything is on PC or some other console now.

> New "Xbox" games run best on PS5 Pro (for consoles at least).

I dunno, the way Windows 11 is going these days that caveat is getting a lot of scrutiny. I would say that, in many cases, they run best on PS5 Pro full stop - at least until the GabeCube releases, for those who can afford it.

Yep. There are no exclusives anymore, not even timed ones. Those releases that aren't Day 1 on Playstation now is only because they were too far along in development to make that happen. This is part of their "Everything is an XBox" mantra, giving people pretty much zero incentive to buy XBox hardware right now.

The “everything is an Xbox” line they’ve been repeating is embarrassing. Did SEGA drag it out this long when they threw in the towel?

AI slop. They're winding down the business.

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