On the latest Xbox Two Podcast, I found myself and my co-host talking about logos for a strange amount of time.
If you’re not chronically online like me, you might be wondering what I’m talking about. Well, Xbox CCO Matt Booty caused a bit of a storm on the X when he confirmed it recently Microsoft will continue to display the logos of competing platforms throughout Xbox Showcase on June 7th.
The PlayStation, Switch and Steam logos will share the stage with Xbox in a move Microsoft’s rivals will never do. After that, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma came out and admitted that it was a mistake and they will reevaluate future shows.
I’m sure 99% of people, even if they are aware of it, don’t really care about it. Despite this, it has caused a wave of condemnation from people invested in the Xbox ecosystem for various reasons.
Toxicity and fanboyism aside, there is an undercurrent of logic lost in the discourse here that I really wanted to highlight. It revolves around the fact that Xbox often has different standards than competing platforms for something, but also because Xbox, and perhaps more accurately Microsoft, no longer has the trust of its core audience.
Logos aren’t the real story here
The Outer Worlds 2 trailer on the PlayStation YouTube channel has to pretend it’s not Xbox and PC next to the big Xbox Game Studios logo 😅 pic.twitter.com/4dNDVg7dkUDecember 14, 2024
There are people out there guarding the gate and wanting to live deep in the imaginary turf war that is simply the console war. But I think for the vast majority it’s less about watching Microsoft’s behavior.
People don’t believe Microsoft has the best intentions for the future of Xbox.
Thanks to its “30-for-30” margin goals, Xbox went on a sprint of disastrous, anti-social decisions that spoiled users and overturned decades of convention. Master Chief is no longer the iconic hero of the Xbox, no longer the analogue of Nintendo’s Mario or PlayStation’s Kratos. Instead, it’s heading to the PlayStation platform as part of a remaster that’s seen as a symbolic (or perhaps actual) surrender.
They remember players like players of a certain age SEGA and others bowed out of the industry. They also remember Microsoft canceling major services with millions of users, including Skype, Windows Phone, and others. Microsoft is not that kind of company needs games for survival, especially in the age of AI. So fans are especially on edge every time Microsoft does something that suggests it wants to get out of owning the platform.
None of Xbox’s other competitors would dream of doing this, and no one expects or even advocates that they do. So why not? Because it makes business sense. PlayStation etc. buy They want Xbox dead, and they want to draw Xbox users into their ecosystem.
I’ve had a lot of conversations with people who think that various games are exclusive based on the fact that they got exclusive marketing rights to the PlayStation or whatever. PlayStation had an exclusive marketing deal of its own Fate 2 Seeing as Microsoft pulled some “creative” marketing beats to advertise the game without directly advertising it.
But this is competition. For the core, PlayStation and others act as companies looking to gain platform market share. By displaying competitors’ logos, Xbox presents itself as a company that wants to sell software at the expense of its hardware platform and ecosystem.
For Xbox customers — who have invested hundreds, perhaps thousands, of dollars in that ecosystem — any sign that Microsoft might be pulling away from the struggling hardware ecosystem, or intentionally or unintentionally damaging its visibility, is seriously amplified. Fair or not.
I think all of us as Xbox customers could do more to offer new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma more patience. Not a few weeks in his work. But I ask those inside Microsoft and outside Microsoft that it is Microsoft itself that has created this climate of mistrust.
The same goes for exclusive discussions. Xbox fans overwhelmingly vote in favor of Microsoft removing games from the PlayStation. And here’s pure math logic: if PlayStation has exclusives and Xbox doesn’t, Why would potential new users buy an Xbox? If new users don’t keep coming, doesn’t that mean microsoft will kill xbox eventually?
I think we all, as Xbox customers, could do more to offer more patience to the new Xbox CEO, Asha Sharma. He’s only been on the job for a few weeks. But I ask those inside Microsoft and outside Microsoft that Microsoft itself has created this climate of mistrust about what it can or cannot do. Years of inconsistency, short-term thinking and broken promises take their toll.
I’m not naive about it. I know some are just waging a console war and using everything as an excuse to be venomous online, but for real fans it’s really not about that. Don’t blame the customers. They are simply defending themselves. This is pure logic to its clearest conclusions.
If Xbox wants to “have its cake and eat it” it needs to prove that its decisions won’t cause the death of Xbox hardware.
For what it’s worth, I predicted the Surface would be dead a few years ago, but despite all that, Microsoft kept it going long after I expected it to.
I’d like to believe Microsoft knows it’s saving itself a headache by continuing to work with its own hardware endpoints. Google and Apple have effectively locked Microsoft out of the entire mobile computing paradigm. They can do the same artificial intelligence. Whether it’s Google’s Android desktop experiences, Apple Silicon-powered MacOS, or Valve. SteamOS … Windows itself has more competition than ever on the horizon.
Microsoft has cleverly positioned itself further back by becoming a cloud infrastructure provider, powering everything other platforms do – but it’s not like it doesn’t have a lot of competition in this space as well.
The lack of trust is something Microsoft needs to work harder to win back.
Many of Microsoft’s software services suffer from a lack of control over endpoints such as iOS and Android. Having a healthy, home-grown ecosystem like Xbox is a moat to insulate yourself from this sort of thing. To be fair, CEO Satya Nadella has said internally that he has been “playing the game for a long time” at a town hall recently … but it’s hard to believe the guy who was in the “metaverse” a few years ago.
Microsoft could do more to show that it is serious about its platforms in the long term. Microsoft EdgeSurface or indeed the Xbox itself.
The lack of trust is something Microsoft needs to work harder to win back. But we all managed with a little more patience.
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