As Summer Game Fest draws to a close, it’s a fitting time for reflection. Not just on the cool games we saw announced (and there were a bunch), but also on an industry that, in recent years, has reached thrilling new creative and artistic highs alongside deeply depressing lows in the form of layoffs, cancelations and studio closures. Xbox is putting its introspection out in the open.
New CEO Asha Sharma and Chief Content Officer Matt Booty penned a public memo to the gaming company’s employees to mark the first 100 days of Sharma’s tenure leading Xbox. The takeaways are pretty grim.
For starters, the simple math of Xbox’s revenue isn’t adding up to success. “Excluding Activision Blizzard King, over the past five years, we have spent over $20 billion on ongoing investments in our content, platform, and hardware subsidy, but our annual revenue has declined nearly half a billion during that time,” the execs state. “Going forward, this cannot continue.” They also acknowledge the impact of RAMaggedon: “We are currently unable to make as many consoles as players want to buy, and we need a new business model and partnerships for hardware as we remain committed to Helix.” (Helix, in this case, is Project Helix, the codename for Xbox’s new console.)
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