On Thursday evening, the still relatively new Xbox head, Asha Sharma, appeared on a Bloomberg Tech livestream, where she took the opportunity to talk about Xbox and the future. Among other things, she commented on the fact that her first hundred days as Xbox boss had been a successful flying start for the brand, causing Xbox's metrics to trend northward again.
However, it sounds like things might slow down a bit going forward, and here's what she said, hinting that the business side of things will need to be revamped next (transcribed by Resetera):
"Well, I think the first 100 days are going to be hard to beat in terms of the excitement, but the next 100 days; look, we've done so much to start to revive Xbox: We've shipped more in the last 100 days then we have in the last year, we've been able to reset Game Pass after an 8 month decline. It's now returned to growth and expanding retention. Most importantly, we're starting to get back to being closer to our players and our community.
"I think the next 100 days we have to reset the business. We need to look at how we're investing, how we're prioritizing, change how we operate in order to return to growth, in order be where the world plays."
The topic of exclusives was also brought up when the interviewer mentioned Netflix as a parallel to Game Pass, a service that would never have become as big as it is without its own content. Sharma responded in a way that almost explicitly suggests Xbox will start offering exclusives again:
"I think it's a tough topic. Look, we're the number 2 publisher in the world, and in order to be a great publisher, you must have your games reach large audiences to play. At the same time, we're increasingly becoming a platform.
"In order to be a platform, you must have exclusive content and services. And so, we're looking at that very closely. I think that we have to be very thoughtful about each title, on how we want to think about it, and learn from similar cases in the industry, and that's what we're doing."
Microsoft has already made it clear that there will be no talk of exclusives at Sunday's Xbox Games Showcase, but the statement that a platform "must have exclusive content" still suggests that Phil Spencer's strategy may be on its way to the trash bin.