{"id":546959,"date":"2026-04-23T19:32:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T19:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/546959\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T19:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T19:32:08","slug":"microsoft-brings-xbox-back-scraps-microsoft-gaming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/546959\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft brings Xbox back, scraps Microsoft Gaming"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has had a busy week. Sharma held an internal town hall with Xbox employees today, just days after announcing an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/news\/915928\/microsoft-xbox-game-pass-ultimate-price-drop\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Xbox Game Pass price cut<\/a>, commenting on the status of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/news\/916601\/microsoft-xbox-mobile-store-comment\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Xbox mobile store<\/a>, and teasing a mysterious <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/news\/916787\/microsoft-discord-xbox-game-pass-partnership\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Xbox and Discord partnership<\/a>. One of the items on the agenda for the employee all-hands was scrapping Microsoft Gaming.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">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. \u201cXbox needs to be our identity,\u201d said Sharma, noting that Microsoft Gaming was a departure from that.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">Sharma\u2019s decision to return to the Xbox division is part of her promise of a \u201creturn of Xbox,\u201d which increasingly looks like a way to put Xbox fans first and correct some previous strategic mistakes. Earlier this week, Sharma reversed a decision to add future Call of Duty titles to Xbox Game Pass, a decision that had originally been debated fiercely inside Microsoft and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/games\/916627\/call-of-duty-xbox-game-pass\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">never made sense<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">Microsoft has now plastered the \u201creturn of Xbox\u201d slogan on the walls of its Xbox offices this week, along with \u201cgreat games\u201d and \u201cfuture of play.\u201d This is the same message as Sharma\u2019s initial <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/games\/882326\/read-microsoft-gaming-ceo-asha-sharma-first-memo\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">memo to Xbox employees in February<\/a>, and part of her early work to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/tech\/913093\/microsoft-new-xbox-ceo-asha-sharma-memo-notepad\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">make a mark<\/a> with big decisions on Game Pass and the Xbox platform.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">A new Xbox logo has also <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/steinekin\/status\/2047034268627742743\" rel=\"nofollow\">started appearing<\/a> on Microsoft\u2019s campus this week, ahead of the Xbox showcase in June. It\u2019s a lot less flat that the current logo, with glass effects. I understand Microsoft has also been using this new logo with some of its internal Project Helix materials.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has had a busy week. Sharma held an internal town hall with Xbox employees&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":546960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1345,205,59,696,1058,227,86,56,54,55,183],"class_list":{"0":"post-546959","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-exclusive","9":"tag-gaming","10":"tag-gb","11":"tag-microsoft","12":"tag-report","13":"tag-tech","14":"tag-technology","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-unitedkingdom","18":"tag-xbox"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/546960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}