{"id":491456,"date":"2026-02-26T10:51:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T10:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/491456\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T10:51:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T10:51:09","slug":"xbox-wont-back-away-from-first-party-and-become-just-a-publisher-insists-evp-matt-booty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/491456\/","title":{"rendered":"Xbox Won&#8217;t Back Away From First-Party And Become &#8216;Just A Publisher&#8217;, Insists EVP Matt Booty"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"scanlines\" title=\"Xbox Won&#039;t Back Away From First-Party And Become &#039;Just A Publisher&#039;, Insists EVP Matt Booty\" href=\"https:\/\/images.purexbox.com\/c3542e775b093\/xbox-wont-back-away-from-first-party-and-become-just-a-publisher-insists-evp-matt-booty.large.jpg\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/xbox-wont-back-away-from-first-party-and-become-just-a-publisher-insists-evp-matt-booty.900x.jpg\" width=\"900\" height=\"506\" alt=\"Xbox Won't Back Away From First-Party And Become 'Just A Publisher', Insists EVP Matt Booty\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Ever since Xbox started putting its games on other platforms (particularly PS5), there&#8217;s been speculation about whether the brand could ultimately end up going the way of SEGA during the Dreamcast days and become &#8220;just a publisher&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Xbox EVP and CCO Matt Booty actually addressed this during yesterday&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.windowscentral.com\/gaming\/xbox\/exclusive-talking-to-new-xbox-ceo-asha-sharma-and-cco-matt-booty\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Windows Central<\/a> interview, telling the outlet that &#8220;we&#8217;re not backing away&#8221; from first-party games and hardware (at least not anytime soon!).<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a bit more on what he had to say about it:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It is core to our partnership with the Microsoft platform, being involved in early hardware decisions \u2014 all the work we&#8217;ve done to get games like Gears of War running great on new devices like the Xbox Ally, and so on. It is embedded within our structure, we&#8217;re not backing away from that. We&#8217;re committed to being a first-party games publisher in partnership with our first-party platform team.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Of course, it&#8217;s not too surprising that Matt Booty is saying this \u2014 we&#8217;ve got some major first-party games launching this year, along with a new handheld (the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.purexbox.com\/features\/five-things-ive-learned-after-using-the-rog-xbox-ally-x-for-eight-hours-per-day\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">ROG Xbox Ally<\/a>) and an upcoming console that could be launching in 2027.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s still good to get clarification regardless though, and it&#8217;s worth noting that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.purexbox.com\/features\/who-is-asha-sharma-a-look-back-at-the-career-of-the-new-xbox-boss\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Asha Sharma<\/a> once again reiterated during this interview that &#8220;returning to Xbox&#8221; is something that &#8220;starts with console&#8221; and &#8220;starts with hardware&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"avatar\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"img lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1772103069_266_avatar.jpg\" width=\"80\" height=\"80\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Fraser Gilbert\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Fraser is the News Editor at Pure Xbox, where he spends his time reporting on the biggest stories in the world of Xbox and beyond.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ever since Xbox started putting its games on other platforms (particularly PS5), there&#8217;s been speculation about whether the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":491457,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[225282,137849,23647,74,1298],"class_list":{"0":"post-491456","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-first-party","9":"tag-matt-booty","10":"tag-publisher","11":"tag-technology","12":"tag-xbox"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=491456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/491457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}