Xbox to double down on its ‘strongest franchises’ as boss sets crazy new goals

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma plans to reverse the brand’s fortunes by the middle of 2027, by focusing on major IP and the ‘biggest new ideas’.

Since Asha Sharma took over as Xbox CEO, the brand has undergone a number of changes in an attempt to pull it back from the brink. 

We’ve seen admissions of past errors, a massive ‘reset’ which saw thousands of employees laid off, and a return to console exclusives with Gears Of War: E-Day and Clockwork Revolution. At the moment, the company is scrambling to make its next console, Project Helix, a more affordable prospect in light of the component crisis. 

Beyond these actions, there’s been a lot of ambitious bluster – like the goal to make Xbox ‘one of the few companies that entertains more than a billion people each day’, which is silly beyond reason. Now, Sharma has laid out more only slightly less ludicrous goals, like turning around the Xbox brand by the middle of 2027. 

Sharma outlined this plan in a tweet earlier this week, but it’s since been expanded on in a memo obtained by The Verge. In the memo, Sharma told staff she ‘will return Xbox to player and revenue growth’ by the end of fiscal year 2027, aka the end of June.

As part of this, Xbox will also ‘improve profits back in line with industry averages’, while ‘every function and every studio will own part of that outcome’. 

This is the first of three ‘stages’ by which Xbox will measure its progress. After somehow returning to growth by June 2027, the following two financial years in 2028 and 2029 will be about ‘producing meaningful player value and revenue acceleration’. 

The third stage is to ‘scale what works’ and by fiscal year 2030, ‘our ambition is to be halfway to our long-term daily player goal with sustained double-digit growth in players and engagement and industry leading margins’. 

Again, it’s not clear what she means by this, but if she’s suggesting that Xbox will be ‘entertaining’ half a billion people daily in just four years time then we’ll have what she’s having.

It’s a whole lot of business buzzword hot air for a company that recently admitted its annual revenue has declined nearly half a billion over the past five years – despite buying Activision Blizzard. Similarly, the component crisis supposedly impacted Xbox ‘more greatly’ than its peers, so apparently that’ll disappear in 2027 too – even though it won’t?

Sharma goes onto emphasise that the console ‘generates the majority of Xbox revenue and remains the foundation of our fandom’, with Xbox’s OS, Game Pass, Windows, and streaming described as the ‘platform for new players and developers’. 

Again, it’s unclear what this means, but it suggests Xbox wants to get back to emphasising its console again, instead of being known for its multi-platform efforts. 

This plan is partially hinged around a priority shift for future games, which will be ‘more focused around our strongest franchises and biggest new ideas’. This includes ‘long-term plans’ for its biggest franchises ‘across film, television, consumer products, sponsorship, live experiences, and form new partnerships globally, including China’. 

Sharma claims three Xbox franchises ‘already generate more than $1 billion annually’, and while she doesn’t specify what these are, we’d assume she was referring to Minecraft, Candy Crush, and Call Of Duty. 

Minecraft is one of the key focuses moving forward, with plans to invest in it ‘more than ever before’. 

In essence, it sounds like Xbox will double down on franchises like Minecraft, Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, and Halo. The mention of ‘biggest new ideas’, however, implies some new IP could squeeze through, but it will likely be dependent on its broader potential.

Although you get the distinct impression that Sharma doesn’t realise a highquality game takes at least five years to make nowadays, so things are not going to turn around in just a couple of years, no matter what else happens.

All this is a shame if it means we’ll get less games like Pentiment or Hi-Fi Rush, but considering how badly Xbox needs a win, it’s an understandable pivot – albeit one which might prove too little, too late if it ever wants to rival Sony in the console space again.

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