The corporate rebrand nobody asked for is getting reversed. Microsoft‘s gaming division is no longer called Microsoft Gaming. It’s just Xbox, the name it probably should never have stopped using.
New Xbox CEO Asha Sharma and chief content officer Matt Booty made it official in a memo published on Xbox Wire and sent to all employees. “Microsoft Gaming describes our structure but it does not describe our ambition,” the letter reads. “So, we are going back to where we started and changing our team’s name. We are Xbox.”
The rebrand comes with a refreshed Xbox logo and a broader strategic reset that puts hardware, exclusivity and daily player engagement back at the center of the operation.
The memo admits players are frustrated
Sharma and Booty didn’t sugarcoat the situation. The letter directly acknowledges that players are unhappy and lists the problems by name: new console features have been arriving less frequently, Xbox’s PC presence isn’t strong enough, pricing has become difficult for users to keep up with, and core experiences like search, content discovery, social features and personalization “still feel too fragmented.”
Developers and publishers are pushing back too, the memo says, demanding better tools, better data and a platform that helps them build faster.
“The model that got us here is not the one that will take us forward,” the letter states.
The new north star is daily active players
Xbox’s primary success metric is shifting to daily active players, measured across four pillars: hardware, content, experience and services.
On hardware, the priorities are stabilizing the current Xbox Series X and Series S generation, delivering Project Helix with top-tier performance and the ability to play both console and PC games, developing high-performance personalized accessories, and building a broader hardware ecosystem that expands player choice.
On content, Sharma outlined plans to grow Xbox’s first-party franchise portfolio, strengthen third-party partnerships with a five-year release slate, expand into China and other emerging and mobile-first markets, maintain and grow live service games with long-term support, and develop what the memo calls “creator-centric” platforms like Minecraft, The Elder Scrolls and Sea of Thieves.
The most closely watched line in the letter: Xbox will “reevaluate our approach to exclusivity, windowing, and AI, and share more as we learn and decide.” That’s a clear signal that the multiplatform strategy pushed in recent years is being reconsidered, though no specific reversals were announced.
The vision statement sounds familiar on purpose
“Xbox will be where the world plays and creates,” Sharma and Booty wrote. “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.”
The letter promises players will be able to carry their games, progress, friends and identity across console, PC, mobile and cloud. Xbox will be “affordable, personal, and open,” with more flexible pricing, openness to all creators from solo developers to major studios, and tools to help them reach a global audience.
Experience and services get their own overhaul
On the experience side, the plan includes making Xbox the best platform for developers and creators, redesigning content discovery, personalization and social features to better connect the community, and turning Xbox into a place where developers want to build.
For services, Sharma committed to strengthening Xbox Game Pass with clearer differentiation and a sustainable economic model, returning the business to stable growth with strict cost management, and improving cloud gaming to feel fast, reliable and “native” on TVs and lower-cost devices.
What this means in practice
The memo covers 25 years of Xbox history and frames the brand as one “built by people willing to try things that others wouldn’t.” It references the original Xbox in 2001, Xbox Live in 2002, and the evolution through friends lists, achievements and cross-device play to a platform that now reaches over 500 million players worldwide.
But the tone isn’t celebratory. It reads like a company that knows it’s lost ground and is trying to articulate a way back. Renaming the division is the easy part. Delivering on a five-year content slate, making Project Helix land, fixing Game Pass economics and reclaiming an identity that players trust requires execution that no memo can guarantee.
