Asha Sharma certainly didn't hold back after stepping into the role of Xbox CEO earlier this year. She has been upfront and vocal about her plans for the platform, the latest of which includes making Xbox the world's largest gaming company by 2030.
Sharma talked more about the current state of Xbox and how she envisions its future in an interview with Bloomberg Tech ahead of this Sunday's big Xbox showcase. Asked about the state of Activision Blizzard acquisitions and mass layoffs in recent years, it was one of the biggest and boldest of the interview's final comments from the CEO.
The world's largest gaming company by 2030
Sharma was asked where she wants Xbox to be by 2030, and her answer was incredibly ambitious. Sharma replied, “I want to see us become the number one gaming and entertainment company.” This is quite a statement. Becoming the number one gaming company within four years alone is one question, but throwing entertainment in there is quite another.
Let's leave the gaming part aside for now, because it's not entirely clear what exactly Sharma and Xbox consider a competition when it comes to conquering the entertainment world. In gaming, the competition is clear – largely PlayStation, but also, to some extent, because it appeals to a different audience, for the most part, Nintendo.
The gap between PlayStation and Xbox has never been bigger
The gulf between PlayStation and Xbox has arguably never been greater. The PS5 is outselling the Series X|S by more than three-to-one. You have to go back 25 years to the original Xbox to find a huge difference between the number of PlayStation and Xbox consoles sold.
Closing that gap to any significant degree, let alone opening the opposite gap on the other side, is a tall enough order in itself. It is quite a thing to say that the goal is to complete it within four years. To possibly sneak Nintendo into that conversation as well, with all the entertainment, it's fair to say that Sharma has lofty, perhaps wildly unrealistic, goals for the platform he's currently in charge of.
He said, what is Sharma trying to say when faced with that question? Xbox has never been number one in gaming before – it's only been number two while Nintendo tries to figure out what it's going to do next. While it would be nice for Xbox to be back in a respectable third place by the end of the decade, rather than a distant third, this is not the answer fans of the platform's ambitions want to hear.
They want Sharma to hear that things like Xbox will be number one within four years, and while ambitious, and maybe even a little ridiculous, that might be where the world is. By 2030 there will be a new generation of consoles. Every platform is now frustrating its users as hardware prices skyrocket. Everyone will be disturbed in this generation and the next. If the Xbox can upset fewer people than the PlayStation, maybe it stands a chance of getting back on a level playing field after the release of Project Helix.
- brand
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Microsoft
- Original release date
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November 10, 2020
- Original MSRP (USD)
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$499
- operating system
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Proprietary (Windows based)
- processor
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Custom AMD 8-core Zen 2 3.8 GHz
- resolve
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720p – 4K UHD
