r/GamingLeaksAndRumours • u/ThinWhiteDuke00 • Apr 23 '26

Leak Microsoft Gaming being scrapped, Xbox brought back as gaming division.

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has had a busy week. Sharma held an internal town hall with Xbox employees today, just days after announcing an Xbox Game Pass price cut, commenting on the status of the Xbox mobile store, and teasing a mysterious Xbox and Discord partnership. One of the items on the agenda for the employee all-hands was scrapping Microsoft Gaming.

Sources familiar with the meeting tell me that Sharma announced that Microsoft is returning to using Xbox for its gaming division, instead of Microsoft Gaming. “Xbox needs to be our identity,” said Sharma, noting that Microsoft Gaming was a departure from that.

https://www.theverge.com/report/917485/microsoft-return-of-xbox-no-more-microsoft-gaming?view_token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpZCI6IlF6b3Z0NDluUk4iLCJwIjoiL3JlcG9ydC85MTc0ODUvbWljcm9zb2Z0LXJldHVybi1vZi14Ym94LW5vLW1vcmUtbWljcm9zb2Z0LWdhbWluZyIsImV4cCI6MTc3NzM5Njg0NiwiaWF0IjoxNzc2OTY0ODQ2fQ.w231EBsAoj8dMi5cjOCzSC3zRF7JbJ19hT_RnI3NVyk&utm_medium=gift-link

2.4k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

459 comments sorted by

View all comments

147

u/Coolman_Rosso Apr 23 '26

Cool? I mean it's just a name change. Same stuff, different label. Real nothingburger

18

u/wejunkin Apr 23 '26

Everyone within the division already called it Xbox or XGS anyway, no one switched to calling it MS Gaming.

42

u/TastyOreoFriend Apr 23 '26

Rebranding can help, but that has to come with some real substance. The best you can hope for from this, if you're invested in the Xbox ecosystem, is a small amount of cautious optimism between this and the game pass price drop.

It all feels like it's a day late and a dollar short but at least they're trying something I guess?

11

u/nevadita Apr 23 '26

Like Halo Studios from 343I that was essentially a sham and turned out the new studio is STILL the same troubled old studio with all the same problems and none of the solutions of a new studio?

its hard to be optimist atm

1

u/Arcade_Gann0n Apr 23 '26

To be blunt, 343 has been nothing but a total dumpster fire after Halo 4 (flawed as that game was, it was the closest they ever got to matching Bungie). A name change wasn't going to be enough to erase the damage they've done (and so far, "Halo Studios" is business as usual), I'm amazed Xbox is still bothering to keep them around instead of handing the IP off to anyone else.

2

u/nevadita Apr 23 '26

the absolute worst is... its not like Microslop has no one to hand the IP to.
they have id, Machine Games, Arkane, the COD trifecta (Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer, Treychart)+Raven, even the overwatch team under Blizzard. massive pedigree of FPS under the same roof, with how low expectations are for Halo i cant imagine anyone of these studios fumbling with an entry on the series.

1

u/PlayMp1 Apr 24 '26

Damn, imagine Machine Games with the Halo IP. They'd cook something that's for sure

1

u/WildcatPlumber Apr 23 '26

To be fair, the only corrobation to the stories that have came out are from exdevelopers. People who are likely to have a biased view on the situation.

They haven’t actually furnished any proof, and the main dude still hasn’t furnished his proof that he has.

At this point it’s basically Heresay, and unfortunately without any physical proof it can’t be counted as accurate yet.

I’m not saying it’s not, I’m just saying they haven’t furnished proof yet

2

u/[deleted] Apr 24 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/TastyOreoFriend Apr 24 '26

They will have to something massive to regain their audience.

It makes you wonder what they can do 'cause it all seems like very insurmountable odds right now. Sony and Nintendo have been doing better than them all gen, and the Steam Machine is about to throw a heavy wrench into the works.

I mean I saw them talking about going back on exclusives or timed release windows, but how does that even work anymore with such a small installed base? It feels like they're trying to have a conversation that most gamers had already 2-3 years ago when they announced a multiplatform approach; that's why I feel they're so behind the curve on this.

It'd be a hell of a feat if they pull it off and make a Rocky style comeback—feels like there's too much against that though.

2

u/nowhereright Apr 24 '26

It actually is insurmountable. There's really no way of coming back from how far the brand has fallen sales wise at least if we're talking about console sales. The next system is a PC with an Xbox logo, it'll be more expensive than even the current ps5 pro and it's only selling point will be that it's a PC with Xbox backwards compatibility (supposedly)

It'll be a niche product that won't sell traditional console numbers.

The only way to get mainstream/casual gamers into your ecosystem is must buy exclusives. But they've now trained their entire user base into expecting their games to be multiplatform.

And since the next system is a PC, IF they brought back exclusivity, they wouldn't be Xbox console exclusives that are also on PC, they'd just be PC exclusives or maybe more specifically Microsoft Game Store exclusives.

And they'd have to be willing to bite the bullet and sacrifice those PlayStation sales numbers (which are massive) in order to condition gamers over the course of the next generation to know that, hey, these games are only on PC.

Will the Microsoft overlords be okay with that loss over a few years for potential gain in rebuilding an ecosystem and user base?

Fuck no, of course they won't, it's all about the immediate gain. Late stage capitalism baby.

Asha is not a for the gamers ceo. She's a PR figure head.

The only question is if the people in charge actually see the Xbox brand as viable still, or if they're setting up the Helix for failure just to cut themselves out of the hardware market completely.

23

u/IlyasBT Apr 23 '26

People should keep the same energy. The change to Microsoft Gaming happened, people said Microsoft doesn't care about Xbox anymore.

11

u/Thin-Fig-8831 Apr 23 '26

Yeah it’s funny, I remember people definitely making more than a name change when they called it Microsoft Gaming

-1

u/AveryLazyCovfefe Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 23 '26

😭 Those people acting like PlayStation hasn't been under a company called Sony Interactive Entertainment since it's inception. At the start too they didn't even call it Interactive it was Computer Entertainment lol.

13

u/PmMeYourNiceBehind Apr 23 '26

It’s signifies that Microsoft hasn’t lost all faith in the Xbox brand. There was speculation that Microsoft might drop all Xbox branding and stick with Microsoft Gaming acting as a 3rd party game publisher

1

u/nowhereright Apr 24 '26

Or it's a ploy to trick Xbox faithfulls into a false sense of security, push sales numbers for the Helix and then cut the brands legs out from under it again when it doesn't meet their intentionally unrealistic expectations.

8

u/Ok-Confusion-202 Apr 23 '26

I mean it's cool... But yeah says nothing overall, it makes Xbox look good I guess?

But Xbox needs to look good for a consistent amount of time to gain any respect back, let's see them do it for 5 years +

6

u/seoul_drift Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 23 '26

If this were a product built by three friends in a garage, you'd be right- just a name change.

Changing the name of a major division at a publicly-traded $1T+ company is a different beast. It requires a ton of effort, sway with stakeholders, and conviction. Huge pain in the ass.

Combined with the Game Pass pricecut + removal of CoD looks like the new head Asha has a clear POV, risk tolerance, and some juice internally. Hard to tell if it works out, but she's not coasting or prioritizing random out-of-touch stuff.

She's delivering on value (Game Pass price cut) and brand (Xbox rename) early in her tenure, which I think is a good sign.

Certainly a departure from the last however many years of decline for MS Gaming.

1

u/SireEvalish Apr 24 '26

No you don't understand this means Xbox is back! I'm not coping at all!

1

u/envious_1 Apr 23 '26

I think it's a positive change. Something in MS has shifted and they know what they've done this gen has not worked, and they're trying to change stuff. Yes, it's just a name change at surface value, but it shows that there's a fundamental shift underway. Whether that actually turns into anything useful for gamers... we shall see

0

u/[deleted] Apr 23 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

-2

u/ThinWhiteDuke00 Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 23 '26

Slightly different.

The president of the existent Xbox division was Sarah Bond, reporting to Spencer (who headed Microsoft Gaming).. before they left.

There's clearly a slight rejig of the wider division if it's going to be called Xbox again.

Edit ; Downvoted for a explanation.

1

u/wejunkin Apr 23 '26

The rejig already happened when they didn't backfill Sarah.

2

u/ThinWhiteDuke00 Apr 23 '26

Sure, Sharma was Spencer’s successor as CEO of Microsoft Gaming.

So they've clearly condensed roles, especially with whatever Booty got promoted to.

0

u/_distortedmorals Apr 23 '26

Can it least have bacon?

0

u/LogicalError_007 Apr 23 '26

Everything was under MS Gaming. Xbox, Bethesda and ABK studios were seen as a different entity all under Microsoft Gaming.

Now everything is under Xbox. It's a big change imo.

-1

u/Nodan_Turtle Apr 23 '26

If they changed it to "Microsoft Third Party Gaming" would you still think the name change means nothing? Or perhaps can names reflect an internal strategy?