Xbox CEO Asha Sharma told employees at a recent Microsoft townhall that Xbox growth has returned after what she called an all-time low. Windows Central reported on the internal meeting, where Sharma credited the division’s ongoing reset with stopping the platform’s decline.
The comments came days after Microsoft’s latest fiscal quarter closed at the end of September. The reset has included repeated rounds of layoffs, and the company has not finished cutting staff. Sharma’s message to employees was that the cuts and the reinvestment around them are now producing Xbox growth.
What Sharma said about Xbox growth
“We’re making the right decisions to reinvest in the business, after an all-time low, we’ve started to return to growth, more than 2 to 3 times what we were, and we expect that to continue,” Sharma said, according to Windows Central. The reported remarks do not say which metric the “2 to 3 times” figure refers to.
She also cited “strong starts” for three recent releases: Minecraft Dungeons 2, Gears of War: E-Day and World of Warcraft: Forever. Alongside the Xbox growth figures, Sharma claimed Xbox brand sentiment is up 30 percent compared with a year ago.
Platform plans and Game Pass
Sharma then turned to goals for the console platform. These include the Play Anywhere and Disc-to-Digital programs, making Xbox easier for studios to develop for, and making Game Pass subscriptions “more flexible.” She gave no details on what a more flexible Game Pass would look like.
She also singled out the arrival of The Witcher 3 on Blizzard‘s Battle.net launcher. Kotaku reads the mention as a sign that more curated third-party games could follow it onto Battle.net on PC.
Project Helix and a family of Gen 10 devices
Her most direct hardware comments concerned Project Helix, the codename for Xbox’s next-generation (Gen 10) hardware. “We are moving to a family of devices for Gen 10,” Sharma said. “There is not one device that fits all. We will certainly have a great console first, but we also know that many players will be on the go.”
She added that Microsoft will build some hardware itself and partner with other companies on the rest. “There are some things that we are the best in the world to manufacture, and there are other things that will we partner on,” she said. According to Sharma, the operating system “is starting to look really good.”
A version of that model already exists. Xbox games currently run on Xbox Series X/S consoles, Windows gaming PCs and the Xbox Ally X, a handheld made by Asus. Sharma did not say how many Gen 10 devices Microsoft will build in-house, or when it will share more.
The Xbox reset is not finished
The upbeat townhall arrives while layoffs continue. Last month, chief content officer Matt Booty said Xbox is only 75 percent of the way through its reset. Hundreds more employees will lose their jobs in the coming months.
Some of the larger bets made under Sharma also sit years away. A reboot of Halo under Activision will take many years to reach players. As a result, it plays no part in the near-term Xbox growth Sharma described to staff.