Xbox is promising big changes for the brand this year and next, but that may not necessarily be a good thing. After the back-to-back failures of the Xbox One and Xbox Series X, there is no arguing that Xbox is in need of re-evaluating itself. With a new boss, Asha Sharma, in charge and a new console, Project Helix, on the horizon, Xbox does appear on the cusp of a new era. However, Xbox fans have heard this song and dance before. Every year, Xbox has sworn it has learned its mistakes and that next year will mark its redemption arc, only for console sales to keep swirling down the drain, to the point where Xbox has gone multiplatform and now ports its exclusives to PlayStation 5.
It is important to remain sceptical when Guy Richards, global director of ID@Xbox (the company’s indie games programme), makes such a sweeping promise as Xbox undergoing more change in the next couple of years than in the brand’s entire 25-year history. 'We believe there’s going to be more change happening in the next couple of years than the 25 years that got us here,' he said during a talk at the Digital Dragons Conference 2026 event for game developers (via GamesRadar). He also talked up the anniversary celebrations that will be occurring this year, which so far includes the return of the Xbox FanFest event and a Fanta collaboration, as well as 'lots of exciting things that we’re doing throughout the summer.'
Xbox does have a summer showcase scheduled that should host some major announcements. The big one will be new details on Gears Of War: E-Day (which is meant to be out this year), but precisely what else will be shown is a mystery. To new boss Sharma’s credit, she has been very active on social media, engaging with fans first-hand and garnering praise for her decisions to kill the unpopular 'This is an Xbox' marketing campaign and lower the price of Xbox Game Pass. However, while she has acknowledged Xbox’s past failings, she is yet to show or do anything tangible to prove that anything can be done to course correct. For instance, there has been talk of re-evaluating Xbox’s stance on exclusives, something many Xbox fans are clamouring for (especially now that Sony is giving up on porting single-player PlayStation 5 games to PC) and has been proven to be an important factor for consoles.
As we have argued, though, it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for Xbox to start locking its first-party games to Xbox hardware again. Plus, Xbox keeps talking about ensuring it reaches players wherever they are, which is counterintuitive to the idea of exclusives. Richards himself reiterated this, saying: 'Players are playing across different devices, they’re accessing games in different ways, free-to-play, premium, subscription, business models are all changing. We’re going to keep meeting players where they are.'
Any prospective changes at Xbox may not inherently be a good thing either. While Sharma has also killed plans to integrate Microsoft’s Copilot AI into Xbox, she has filled her leadership team with people from the company’s CoreAI division, where she herself previously served as president. Combined with Microsoft’s pro-generative AI stance, this could indicate further AI integration in other ways, despite Sharma’s promises not to 'flood our ecosystem with soulless AI slop.'
