Xbox CEO Asha Sharma in an internal town hall with employees, reported by Windows Central, discussed the recent changes at Xbox and the future of Xbox with Project Helix.
She suggested Xbox needs to invest more in consoles, despite the fact the segment hasn’t seen growth in the number of players. She believes Xbox has a chance to grow in the space and that Xbox doesn’t have “the right” to grow outside of consoles if they can’t server their “most valuable players the right way.”
Sharma states that strengthening the current generation of Xbox – the Xbox Series X|S – is to key to this, and called out Xbox Cloud Gaming, disc-to-digital program, and the growing number of Xbox Play Anywhere titles. She did tease Xbox Game Pass will get “flexible for more players in the future.
She also discussed the next-generation of Xbox, Project Helix, and described it as a “family of devices” and might have hinted at a potential handheld.
“We are moving to a family of devices for Gen-10,” she said. “There is not one device that fits all. We will certainly have a great console first, but we also know that many players will be on the go. There are some things that we are the best in the world to manufacture, and there are other things that will we partner on. So, we will be sharing more about that as our plans develop. The operating system is starting to look really good. We’re very excited about this.”
There are plans to grow Battle.net as a platform and right now it is nearly on-par with Steam in terms of user retention. “We will do it the right way for those communities,” she said on Battle.net.
Xbox PC, according to Sharma, is the number one PC gaming storefront in China. Xbox will continue to invest in other PC apps where there is a distinct audience.
Xbox is also working on “simplifying” the target and streamlining APIs for publishing on Xbox to make it easier for developers to release games on Xbox Series X|S, Project Helix, and Xbox PC.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D’Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
