When Asha Sharma was appointed as the new CEO of Xbox, her first move was to end the disastrous “This is an Xbox” advertising campaign. The idea was to maximize one of the Xbox's best features: the ability to play your games on a range of devices. But the unintended side effect is that it actually makes owning an Xbox seem pointless, devaluing the brand in the eyes of many.
However, just because the slogan is retiring, it doesn't mean that Xbox is giving up on what it represents. Responding to reports suggesting Xbox has abandoned plans to roll out its own mobile game store, Sharma says it's still in the works, and that Xbox should keep gaming “open”.
The Xbox Mobile Game Store is still coming, says CEO Asha Sharma
Sharma's comments come amid speculation that Xbox is abandoning its mobile gaming efforts. This is because a web page about the mobile game store has been removed, suggesting that the project has been scrapped, especially since it was announced almost two years ago, with nothing to show for it.
Now Sharma has clarified that this is not the case. “Three weeks ago, we filed an amicus brief [legal document] Because mobile competition is still important and we believe the future of gaming should be more open,” she says. “While I'm still learning, the idea of the Xbox Mobile Store is not dead.”
The big takeaway here is that, for now, the mobile store is still happening. But the wording here also suggests something else – Xbox isn't completely abandoning plans to expand beyond consoles and PC. Here, she says that “the future of gaming should be more open”, which sounds suspiciously like “This is an Xbox”, but in much better terms.
Of course, it was never suggested that the Xbox Play Anywhere campaign was being scrapped, but this commitment to mobile gaming goes far beyond the core gamer crowd that Sharma has been focusing on since being appointed CEO. It will be interesting to see if Xbox can strike a balance that it hasn't been able to in recent years, keeping its core fanbase happy while expanding to other audiences.
