Xbox has been in trouble for a while, but the ambitions of the company have only gotten more pronounced. Despite the recent wave of layoffs and closures, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma’s has released a statement saying these moves have been made to give Xbox a “bigger future.” As reported on by WindowsCentral, Sharma said in a formal statement the company will grow and become the place where “the world plays and creates.” The end result of that plan is to see Xbox “entertain more than a billion people each day.”
Videos by ComicBook.com
Even for the biggest names in the industry, that’s a big ask. For Xbox, which has already been struggling to keep up with the competition, it seems next to impossible. If that’s the end goal for Xbox and anything less feels like a failure, then things don’t look good for the future of the company. In fact, it seems to place Xbox on the path to follow in the footsteps of Sega, whose ambitions to stay relevant in the console race at the turn of the century led to them leaving that part of the industry altogether.
There’s No Way Xbox Is Going To “Entertain A Billion People A Day”
Xbox’s ambitions to become the default entertainment device have always been a bit of a long stretch. In an era of seemingly infinite options for entertainment, where gaming PCs are becoming more popular, and titles designed for mobile platforms make up over half of the industry’s revenue, home consoles are increasingly becoming a niche market. That’s not neccesarily a bad thing, as the consoles still offer a lot of options to players and create plenty of ways to produce income for companies. However, Microsoft’s bold efforts to turn the Xbox brand into the “everything” brand have always struggled, with initiatives like Game Pass failing to get the numbers it needed to be a success. At the time of writing, Xbox reaches roughly a billion players on a yearly basis.
Platforms like Steam are in the ballpark of 150 million monthly users, while PlayStation has 125 million monthly users. For Xbox to be a brand that “entertains more than a billion people each day,” the brand would need to expand on a frankly impossible global scale. It would need to break into markets it hasn’t yet crossed over into, like large swaths of Africa, South America, and the Middle East. It could be argued that Sharma’s comments include streaming platforms like Netflix or online spaces like Twitch, all funneled through Xbox. However, that reliance on other companies’ output would reinforce the argument that Xbox needs outside companies to be seen as a worthwhile platform.
If someone is primarily interested in Disney+ over gaming on an Xbox, they have little reason to invest in a console they wouldn’t use to its full potential. Realistically, there’s little way for Xbox to achieve the goals that they’ve set for themselves, especially as the company is bleeding money elsewhere thanks to investments in AI that have not paid off. It’s the kind of ambition that would be commendable in other situations but comes across as overconfident in the current environment, especially as more players flock to other platforms and developers grow wary about working with a publisher that seems more than content to close up studios when they don’t meet their highest expectations.
Why Xbox’s Ambitions Are Going To End Up Killing It
Microsoft has always had lofty ambitions for Xbox. As reported by Bloomberg, the company has expected higher profit margins than most of the rest of the gaming industry, which has been used to help justify the company’s closures and shutdowns of studios that fall under its umbrella. However, it doesn’t change the fact that Xbox is firmly in third place in the console race, trailing behind Sony and Nintendo. The Steam Machine could only further complicate their situation as the console market continues to shrink in the face of rising prices and more competition from mobile platforms. This has me worried that in the end, Microsoft is finally going to be forced to confront the reality that Xbox won’t be able to reach the impossible goals it has been set.
As a result, the company will likely shift — the branding is still too valuable, and the studios that fall under the Xbox banner still make big-hit games. However, much as Sega decided to leave the console market after the Dreamcast failed to properly compete with the PS2, GameCube, and original Xbox, I fear this ends with Microsoft turning into a pure games publisher instead of a console manufacturer. While Sega has done well for itself as a third-party publisher, that transition took time to figure out — a luxury that the modern gaming industry doesn’t really have at the moment. That shift would also inevitably come with more job losses, something that’s hurting the industry as a whole. Xbox’s plays right now seem to be too big to actually succeed, and I’m worried they are setting themselves up to fail in spectacular fashion.
