New Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has some big decisions to make.
Yesterday, we had a good look at the current state of Microsoft’s mobile game empire, noting Sharma’s pledge to “protect what works, and be brave enough to change what does not.”
And while it has, according to our sources, had some problems in the last year, King is one part of Microsoft’s gaming empire that is surely working. With an estimated $1.3bn in IAP earnings last year and likely millions more in ad revenue to be accounted for, it is a steady, very profitable business that serves millions of players every day.
But when it comes to being brave enough to change what doesn’t work, Sharma surely has to look at Xbox’s attempts to attract a broader player, be it through that ‘This is an Xbox’ campaign or through its push for gamers to ‘play anywhere’.
As she slips into the Xbox hotseat, Sharma surely has to ask herself one big question: even if all Xbox games do become seamlessly playable anywhere, on every device, do people actually want that?
The first mistake here is assuming that people want to play big screen console games on a phone through the cloud, with or without a bluetooth controller.
The act of making a load of hardcore games playable on a phone does not suddenly make those games appeal to a new audience; it just means those games are now playable on a variety of other completely unsuitable devices.
Big screen games have always been, and will continue to be, a terrible fit for mobile play, both in terms of player experience and actually making any money. As we have reported time and time again, it doesn’t matter if it’s Resident Evil, Assassin’s Creed or Death Stranding – the market for triple-A console games on mobile is barely there. And so it follows that streaming console games on a phone is even less appealing, given the added faff and potential connection issues.
From a revenue-per-player point of view, it is also madness. If mobile gamers are happy to spend big money on upgrades and gear in COD Mobile, Diablo Immortal, Fallout Shelter and Age of Empires Mobile, let them. Pushing players towards playing the original, big screen editions of these games on Game Pass, which are both not designed to monetise in the same way and unsuitable for mobile play is, frankly, insane.
Let’s remember that the reverse is true, too. King’s games have never really got any traction on big screens, because they are not designed for that kind of play, or that kind of player. Why on earth would you want to play a match 3 on a TV with a controller?
Surely it is obvious at this point that different platforms serve different players with different types of games? It is a truly baffling thing to observe a giant tech company full of very smart people assume that all games are equally suited to all platforms. They are not.
If Microsoft truly wants to grow the market and appeal to new players, King is right there, continuing to make big money from millions of players who would never pick up an Xbox pad or subscribe to Game Pass on PC. These are the exact players Microsoft need to target next, and with conviction. That is what true expansion looks like – serving the same fanbase with the same handful of franchises is great, but it’s really just treading water.
The need for Xbox and Microsoft to do this was obvious back in 2022, when in court documents related to the Activision Blizzard buyout Microsoft said that it needed to move mobile players over to “a new Xbox Mobile Platform”.
Those plans never materialised, of course, and Xbox hasn’t done a single thing it said it would do in mobile since then. In February 2024, it said was prepping a ‘gamer-first app store’; by May, it was a web store launching in July; by August, it was MIA. In October, it said store functionality would be live in the existing Xbox app by November – in December, and it was all TBC again.
And it simply stopped talking about a mobile store completely last year. Let’s assume it got quietly killed off.
Even as that monster Activision Blizzard buyout was still in flight, then-Xbox boss Phil Spencer made the point again and again in a Verge interview and elsewhere that the deal was not about making Call of Duty an Xbox exclusive – it was about expanding Xbox’s reach into mobile, mostly through King.
“Mobile is a place where if we don’t gain relevancy as a gaming brand, over time the business will become untenable,” he said. That was in November 2022. Today, in February 2026, the Xbox brand continues to be practically irrelevant on mobile, and it always will be, frankly.
Xbox is a brand for hardcore console and PC gamers who – in many cases – actively despise everything about mobile games. Why bother trying to change that?
King is already a trusted casual mobile brand. So really, Microsoft would be wise to forget trying to shoehorn big PC and console games into unsuitable platforms, and instead concentrate on genuinely expanding its reach by building King into an even bigger, broader casual games brand.
(And while they’re at it, they could also acquire Nex Playground, the low-price, family-friendly Kinect-style device that actually started outselling the Xbox in the US at the end of 2025. That would really shake things up.)
Xbox is for gamers, King is for everyone else. Sharma can focus and simplify Microsoft’s gaming efforts overnight by defining these two distinct parts of its games business clearly, and then concentrate on playing to the strengths of each.
That’s assuming Microsoft is true to its word, of course, and intends to continue to be a major player in the games business. If Sharma is just there “as a palliative care doctor who slides Xbox gently into the night”, then she can always sell bits of her empire off to the Saudis, right?
