Xbox CEO Asha Sharma and CCO Matt Booty have published the “We Are Xbox” manifesto, confirming that the company is reevaluating exclusivity, rebranding from Microsoft Gaming, and targeting daily active players as its new north star metric.
Xbox CEO Asha Sharma and Chief Content Officer Matt Booty published a company-wide manifesto on April 23, 2026, titled “We Are Xbox,” laying out a comprehensive strategic roadmap for the platform’s future. With Xbox now reaching over 500 million players worldwide, the new leadership confirmed three headline-grabbing moves: the “Microsoft Gaming” branding is being retired in favour of simply “Xbox,” the company will reevaluate its approach to game exclusivity and AI, and daily active players will replace all previous internal metrics as the platform’s north star.
Why Xbox Is Resetting Its Strategy
The memo opens with a strikingly candid admission: “Players are frustrated.” Sharma and Booty acknowledged that new feature drops on console have been too infrequent, Xbox’s PC presence is not strong enough, pricing has become difficult for players to keep up with, and core experiences like search, discovery, social, and personalisation still feel fragmented. Developers and publishers have been asking for better tools, better insights, and a platform that helps them grow faster.
This honesty comes after years of aggressive multiplatform expansion. Throughout 2025, Xbox released six first-party titles on PS5, including Forza Horizon 5 (which reportedly sold over 5 million copies on PlayStation), Indiana Jones, Avowed, and several others. Day-and-date PS5 launches were planned for 2026 titles like Fable, Halo: Campaign Evolved, and Minecraft Dungeons II. While the financial returns were real, Xbox console owners increasingly questioned the value of investing in Xbox hardware when the same games appeared everywhere.
“The model that got us here won’t be the one that takes us forward,” the memo states directly.
Exclusivity Is Being Reevaluated
The single most discussed line in the manifesto reads: “Along the way, we will reevaluate our approach to exclusivity, windowing, and AI, and share more as we learn and decide.” This is the first official confirmation that Xbox’s current multiplatform publishing strategy is under active review.
No immediate policy reversal has been announced. Games already confirmed for PS5 and Switch 2 in 2026 are likely unaffected. However, the signal is clear: Sharma’s team recognises that the platform needs stronger reasons for players to stay within the Xbox ecosystem. Windows Central’s Jez Corden has reported that “massive internal discussions” about exclusivity are currently happening within Xbox. Whether this results in full console exclusivity for certain titles, expanded timed-exclusivity windows (similar to the approach taken with the upcoming Forza Horizon 6), or a more selective game-by-game strategy remains to be seen.
Sharma herself set the tone early. When a fan urged her on social media to bring back console exclusives shortly after her appointment, her reply of “Hear you” generated enormous community engagement. She also personally directed the removal of the “This is an Xbox” marketing campaign from official channels, with a Microsoft spokesperson confirming it “didn’t feel like Xbox.”
The Four-Pillar Roadmap
Xbox’s future strategy is structured around four priorities: hardware, content, experience, and services. All four are designed to serve the new north star metric of daily active players.
Hardware
The current Xbox Series generation will be stabilised as “a healthy and high-quality base.” Project Helix is positioned to “lead in performance and play your console and PC games.” The ecosystem will expand with comfortable, personal, high-performance accessories and broader device reach.
Content
Xbox plans to grow and extend “an enduring portfolio of franchises players love,” strengthen third-party partnerships with a five-year content slate, expand into China and emerging markets, maintain investment in live service games, and elevate creator-centric platforms like Minecraft, The Elder Scrolls, and Sea of Thieves. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella noted in mid-2025 that nearly 40 games were in active development across Xbox studios.
Experience
Discovery, customisation, social features, and personalisation are all targeted for overhaul. The memo acknowledges these areas feel “too fragmented” and promises to make Xbox “the best place for developers and creators to build and grow.”
Services
Game Pass will be “fortified with clear differentiation and sustainable economics.” Cloud gaming is targeted to feel “native, fast, and reliable across TVs and low-cost devices.” And notably, the memo states Xbox will “use M&A deliberately to accelerate growth where organic paths are too slow,” signalling that further acquisitions remain on the table.
Project Helix: The Next-Generation Xbox
Project Helix was officially announced by Asha Sharma on March 5, 2026, and received its most detailed technical reveal at GDC 2026 on March 11 through Jason Ronald’s Xbox Developer Summit keynote. The console is built around a custom AMD SoC (codenamed “Magnus” in leaks) featuring RDNA 5 graphics, Zen 6 processing, and a dedicated NPU. It is designed to natively play both Xbox console and PC games, a first for any Xbox hardware.
Confirmed technical highlights include an order-of-magnitude leap in ray tracing performance (enabling true path tracing on console for the first time), AMD FSR Diamond with neural rendering and multi-frame generation, GPU-directed work graph execution, next-generation DirectX support, and four-generation backward compatibility. Leaked specifications suggest 36 to 48 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 192-bit bus, with native 4K at 120 FPS as the target. Microsoft has not officially confirmed memory or resolution figures.
Alpha developer kits will ship to studios beginning in 2027. Circana analyst Mat Piscatella has interpreted this timeline as meaning the consumer version likely will not arrive until at least 2028, though some industry observers believe a late 2027 launch remains possible. CCO Matt Booty confirmed on the Official Xbox Podcast that first-party studios are working “side-by-side” with the hardware team on Project Helix, involved in everything from spec planning to early development.
Chris Charla of Xbox also stated that Microsoft is working toward a future where developers ship one build across Project Helix, PC, and cloud devices, dramatically simplifying the porting process compared to previous generations.
Game Pass Price Cuts and the Call of Duty Decision
Days before the manifesto, Xbox announced significant Game Pass price reductions. Game Pass Ultimate dropped from $29.99 to $22.99 per month (roughly 23% off), while PC Game Pass fell from $16.49 to $13.99. The Essential and Premium tiers remained unchanged. Sharma stated that the service had become “too expensive for players” and that the reduction was made directly in response to user feedback.
The price cut came with a major content change: future Call of Duty titles will no longer launch on Game Pass on day one. New entries will arrive approximately one year after release. Existing Call of Duty games remain accessible. Analysts had speculated that Call of Duty’s inclusion had done little to grow subscriber numbers relative to its massive licensing cost, making this a financially motivated decision as much as a player-facing one.
Additional changes are reportedly in development, including a rumoured “Triton” tier focused exclusively on first-party Xbox games at a lower price point, as well as a possible ad-supported option and discussions with Netflix about potential bundling.
Microsoft Gaming Is Dead, Long Live Xbox
The rebranding from “Microsoft Gaming” back to “Xbox” is more than cosmetic. Sharma and Booty wrote that “‘Microsoft Gaming’ describes our structure but it does not describe our ambition.” The new cultural principles listed in the manifesto include “Earn every player,” “Protect our art,” “Stay rebellious,” “Progress over perfection,” and “Makers over managers.” The frank acknowledgment that Xbox is “a challenger” signals a shift away from the corporate-first posture of recent years toward a more player-centric, competitive identity.
What the AI Reevaluation Means
Alongside exclusivity and windowing, the manifesto confirms that Xbox’s approach to artificial intelligence is also being reevaluated. Sharma, a former executive in Microsoft’s CoreAI division, has publicly stated she will not “flood our ecosystem with slop” and that AI should support developers rather than replace human creativity. The manifesto’s “protect our art” principle is widely interpreted as a stance against unchecked generative AI in game development. What specific policy changes this will produce is not yet clear, but the messaging is notably more cautious than what other major publishers have offered on the topic.
What Happens Next for Xbox Players
The manifesto is a statement of direction, not a policy document. No specific games have been confirmed as exclusive or pulled from multiplatform plans. The real test will come at the Xbox Games Showcase expected in June 2026, where concrete content announcements will reveal how much of this strategic vision translates into action.
In the near term, Xbox players can look forward to reduced Game Pass pricing already in effect, Xbox Mode rolling out to Windows 11 starting in April 2026, a strong 2026 release slate including Halo, Gears of War, Fable, and Forza Horizon 6, and the platform’s 25th anniversary celebration expected around November 2026. Project Helix’s public unveiling is rumoured for that same anniversary event, with developer kit distribution beginning in 2027.
As The Game Business editor Christopher Dring observed, the daily-active-players metric gives Xbox a coherent focus for the first time in years. “Xbox is a complex business with multiple elements that can, at times, conflict with one another,” he noted. “I feel I have more clarity on what Xbox actually is in 2026.” For players, that clarity cannot come soon enough.
For more on the changes shaping Xbox’s ecosystem, check out our coverage of Game Pass Ultimate’s new pricing and Project Helix’s hardware direction.
