Microsoft has spent years telling anyone who'll listen that Windows is a gaming platform, that Xbox is everywhere, that the brand stretches beyond the console under your TV. So it hits different when Asha Sharma and Matt Booty , Xbox's CEO and newly appointed chief content officer , put it in writing for all their staff to read: the PC presence isn't good enough.
The joint memo, published on April 23 and shared publicly after going out internally, is one of the more candid documents to come out of Microsoft's gaming division in recent memory. Here's the key passage, quoted directly:
"Players are frustrated. New feature drops on console have been less frequent. Our presence on PC isn't strong enough. Pricing is getting harder for people to keep up with. And core experiences like search, discovery, social, and personalization still feel too fragmented."
That's not a vague acknowledgement of room for improvement. That's a list of failures, written by the people running the company.
The Microsoft Gaming name is gone
Buried near the end of the memo is a branding change that's actually pretty significant. Microsoft Gaming , the umbrella name adopted in 2022 to cover Xbox Game Studios, Bethesda, Activision Blizzard, and King , is being retired. The Xbox name is back as the primary brand for all of it.
It's a symbolic move, but symbols matter in corporate communications. The "Microsoft Gaming" experiment lasted roughly four years and coincided with a period that included the $69 billion Activision Blizzard acquisition, a wave of studio closures, and Xbox hardware sales dropping 32% as recently reported. Returning to the Xbox name signals, at minimum, that leadership wants a cleaner identity going forward.
Sharma took over from Phil Spencer in February, and since then the changes have been coming at a steady pace: the end of the "this is an Xbox" marketing strategy, a promise to avoid what she called "soulless AI slop," and a recent reduction in Game Pass pricing (though future Call of Duty titles won't hit the service until roughly a year after launch). The memo fits that pattern of acknowledging what went wrong before trying to fix it.
What the memo actually promises
Here's the thing , the frank diagnosis is more compelling than the prescription. The forward-looking section of the memo leans heavily on phrases like "flexible pricing," "open to all creators," and "adapt to you." Industry analyst Mat Piscatella called it "excellent" on Bluesky, saying it sets "a strong foundation and a vision for the future." That's a reasonable read if you're optimistic.
What most players miss in documents like this is what's conspicuously absent. There are no specific commitments, no timelines, no concrete features announced. The memo states that Xbox's "new north star will be daily active players" , a metric-driven framing that sounds more like a product roadmap than a gaming philosophy. Leadership also says it will "reevaluate our approach to exclusivity, windowing, and AI," which is about as non-committal as it gets.
The PC section of the memo is worth reading carefully, because it suggests Microsoft sees Windows as the competitive battleground going forward: "Windows now represents more players and more hours and is increasingly where competition is most intense." That's an accurate read of where PC gaming sits right now. Steam's player numbers continue to climb, and the platform has become the default home for the kind of mid-size and indie titles that have driven the most cultural momentum in recent years.
The gap between diagnosis and action
Microsoft has a long and well-documented history of recognizing PC gaming's importance and then under-delivering on it. The Games for Windows Live era is the most notorious example, but there are more recent ones: the Microsoft Store's years of friction compared to Steam, the Windows app for Xbox that still doesn't feel like a first-class product, the persistent issues with PC Game Pass titles launching in worse shape than their console counterparts.
The memo's PC admission lands in that context. Saying the presence isn't strong enough is the easy part. The harder part is building something on PC that competes with Steam's ecosystem, which has had a 20-year head start and a user base that's deeply loyal to Valve's platform.
The memo also came out the same day Microsoft launched an early-retirement buyout program for employees , the first in the company's history , as the broader organization continues redirecting resources toward AI. That's not a great backdrop for a memo about renewed gaming ambition.
For now, the Xbox brand is back, the problems are named, and the direction is gestured at. Whether the follow-through matches the candor of this memo is the only question that actually matters. Keep an eye on our latest gaming news as Microsoft's plans take shape over the coming months, and check out our gaming reviews to stay across what's actually worth playing on PC in the meantime.
