Why Xbox’s corporate change is important for everyone who plays games | games

AAnd so everything changes on Xbox. It was announced last Friday that Microsoft’s gaming chief executive, Phil Spencer, will retire, while its president, Sarah Bond, will resign. In its place is a new partnership: Matt Botti, head of Xbox Game Studios, has been promoted to chief content officer, while the new CEO is Asha Sharma, who moves from her position as head of Microsoft’s CoreAI product.

In a company-wide email, Spencer said he would stay on through the summer in an advisory role before “starting the next chapter of my life.” For her part, Bond issued a statement on her LinkedIn account: “I have decided that this is the right time for me to take my next step, both personally and professionally.” It was all very good-natured, but it is doubtful that these official letters tell the whole story.

For 25 years, Xbox has been a monolithic presence in the gaming industry. It has consistently challenged PlayStation as the most popular and technologically advanced console, revolutionized online gaming, and brought us multi-million-selling titles like Halo, Gears of War, and Forza Horizon. And for most of that time, Spencer was the boss of the machine.

Spencer has been in charge of Xbox since 2014, and inherited the PR disaster that was the Xbox One announcement. From there, it embraced new innovations like cloud gaming and subscriptions, turning Xbox into a cross-platform app and ushering in Game Pass, giving owners access to new and old games for a single monthly fee. He also oversaw a period of massive development expansion, buying ZeniMax Media for $7.5 billion in 2020 and then Activision Blizzard for $69 billion in 2023, thus getting Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and Candy Crush for the empire.

But it was also a period of job cuts in Microsoft’s gaming division, as well as waves of studio closures and game cancellations. Tango Gameworks, The Initiative, and Arkane Austin have closed, the remake of Perfect Dark has been cancelled, and Rare’s intriguing environmental adventure Everwild has been cancelled.

“Spencer leaves Microsoft with Xbox in a bit of a bind,” says gaming analyst George E. Osborne, whose book Power Play: Video Games, Politics and the Battle for Global Influence comes out in June. “Its hardware sales have declined dramatically in recent years, but the dream of offering a cross-platform game subscription service to replace it has not materialized. It leaves working with Xbox in a confusing position, while at the same time establishing the company as one of the world’s top three video game publishers by revenue but lacking clarity on its next direction.”

There is concern about the redeployment of Sharma from the AI ​​department – is she there to further cut costs by giving the green light to further cut the studio in favor of the AI ​​generation? In her letter to employees, she assured them that “we will not chase short-term efficiency or flood our ecosystem with soulless AI.” […] I want to return to the rebellious spirit that built Xbox in the first place. But can this spirit, which saw a small team of passionate engineers attack Microsoft’s arcane Orwellian edifice, really be recaptured in our age of mass global integration? We live in the age of the forever game, the massive vertical – Roblox, Fortnite, Minecraft, Genshin Impact, Honor of Kings; Billion-dollar games that require millions of dollars to create, market, and maintain.

Might it be tempting for Microsoft to phase out Xbox entirely? That’s exactly what Xbox co-founder Seamus Blakely said in an interview on Monday, telling Gamesbeat: “Xbox, like a lot of companies that aren’t core AI, has shut down. They’re not saying that, but that’s what’s happening. I expect that…her job will be as a palliative care doctor gently piloting the Xbox at night.”

As analyst Matthew Ball’s current annual gaming industry report shows, record revenues may have been possible in 2025, but the sector is losing its share of the attention economy to social media, sports betting, “content creators” and other lively interactive experiences. So it’s worth asking: What role do games really play in the future of this $3 trillion company? “Hiring a new leader with a background in AI suggests that Microsoft may be thinking more intensely about how Xbox can serve its broader ambitions, rather than how Microsoft can serve Xbox’s growth,” Osborne says. “While this may make sense when it comes to building a corporate structure, it runs the risk of weakening the kind of creative risk-taking that is necessary for success in the video game industry.”

Spencer always said he loved games, and the few times I met him, I believed him. But there’s no guarantee that his successors will feel the same way — will they love games enough to support strange new experimental projects? Will they support another Minecraft or Sea of ​​Thieves game? These are big, brave gambles, and the casino looks very different than it did when the dice were first rolled on Xbox several years ago.

What are you playing?

Imagine if golf was a really fun and exciting sport. This is a frankly ridiculous suggestion Super Battle Golfan eight-player online sports simulation game where everyone has to try to get the ball into the hole at the same time while violently sabotaging their opponents’ efforts.

You can hit people with your nine-iron, crush them in your golf cart, or eliminate them with your orbital death laser, all while facing the usual challenges of ruining a good run. The cartoony visual style recalls other multiplayer titles like Gang Beasts and Fall Guys, and the array of courses adds real depth and challenge to the carnage. It’s as if the PGA Tour sim series has crossed paths with Worms – no wonder it was downloaded by 100,000 people in its first week on sale.

Available on: computer
Estimated playing time: 20 hours plus

What are you reading?

• It’s always interesting to see video games re-evaluated critically. In this article for AV Club, Bee Wertheimer says that although it was a beloved indie game 10 years ago, Fire control Perhaps they were as toxic as the fantasies of the male toys she sought to counter.

• Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot spoke to Variety about the future of Assassins Creed and Far Cry, and how the company will be restructured into five semi-independent “creative houses,” each responsible for different brands. It sounds like something out of Game of Thrones, but Guillemot hopes the plan will stabilize the company after a difficult period.

• valve It faces a lawsuit in the UK courts over the share of revenue it gets from game sales on its Steam platform. Digital safety campaigner Vicky Schutbolt asserts that Valve is exploiting UK gamers: “Steam is a big, important platform for a big, important ecosystem – it needs to cooperate fairly, and that’s clearly not the case,” she told GamesIndustry.biz.

What to click on

Question block

This week’s question comes from Andrew In Liverpool:

“Even though I started gaming in the 80s, I never played games that relied on turn-based combat, and the few RPGs I did play were always of the action variety. Last year I I tried Persona 4 Golden and loved it, even though I had to lower the difficulty level. Can you recommend games that are a good entry point for learning systems and concepts? There are many I am I don’t know where to start and I worry that choosing the wrong option might completely alienate me.

This is a difficult question to answer because all role-playing games have different approaches to combat rules and systems, so it’s difficult to recommend one that gives a reliable overview. Aside from trying out other titles in the Persona series (esp Persona 5 Royal), you could be looking for an actual remake of a classic title, something like that Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remakeone of the greatest entries in the formative Dragon Quest series, which has a beautiful combat system. The last Final Fantasy VII Titles remake and New birth It may also work.

You can also try a modern game that seeks to explore the classic era – Sea of ​​stars For example. But if you like the look and feel of Persona 4, this is excellent Metaphor: rifantasio It is a kind of spiritual companion to the Persona series and you can reduce the difficulty level in the settings. I also love Yakuza: Like a dragon and Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth From Sega, which uses a lot of familiar systems – it’s very silly and lovable, and the learning curve is generous. I know a lot of players who started their RPG journey with Celebrities last year Claire Obscure: Expedition 33although it has a lot of real-time elements as well.

We hope there is something here that tempts you!

If you have a question about the Q&A – or anything else you’d like to say about the newsletter – Email us at pushbuttons@theguardian.com.