Xbox has had yet another noisy week.
First there was a Game Pass price cut, then talk of resurrecting its presumed-dead mobile game store.
Later, there was a manifesto of sorts from new boss Asha Sharma (and Matt Booty too, but this was clearly Sharma putting her stamp on things). There was also an interview with both execs, in which Sharma re-stated: “We have to restore the core”.
Vague chat about that mobile store aside, it’s a little odd that the thousands of staffers working in the mobile wing of the empire formerly known as Microsoft Gaming won’t find much guidance on what might be happening outside of console and PC here.
What they will find, however, is a new spin on a familiar mobile game metric, DAU. Xbox now has a new ‘North Star’, says Sharma: daily active players. (I’ve got to say, DAP doesn’t quite have the same ring to it…)
Of course, the easiest way to boost that number is grab more players outside of the very, very oversaturated PC and console space, right? And, as we’ve argued before, expanding out of that relatively small core base must surely mean a detailed and ambitious plan centred on mobile, right…?
Nope! In fact, mobile is not mentioned at all in that Game File interview, and it is only referenced twice in that ‘we are Xbox’ manifesto. So is mobile part of this grand plan, or not? As ever with Xbox, picking apart the grand claims it makes about its future just leads to more confusion.
But let’s do it anyway.
Mobile is first mentioned in passing when talking about making Xbox games playable everywhere. And we’ve written about the fundamental problem with this ‘play anywhere’ idea before – in short, core console and PC players don’t want to play those games on their phones, and never will. At the same time, putting games for hardcore players on new devices does not automatically make those games appealing to the casual player. This has been proven time and time again, so it is baffling to see Microsoft trot this one out once more.
Later in that ‘we are Xbox’ piece, there’s a single bullet point on expanding “into China, emerging markets, and mobile-first audiences”.
This frames expanding into mobile as a new thing, but it is not; one can argue that acquiring Candy Crush maker King for billions of dollars as well as licensing top IP like Diablo, Call of Duty and Fallout for mobile spin-offs marks a pretty hefty expansion into mobile already.
To make real sense of all this chatter, you really need to consider the intended audience and outcomes from that ‘We are Xbox’ blog: this is a load of quick, easy wins for a new boss looking to assert authority on their particular slice of the Microsoft machine.
Changing the name of the division (again) and jazzing up the logo is a simple way for Xbox to say to its disillusioned base that it is returning to the stuff they liked back when they first picked up an Xbox pad.
Those players may not even be aware that King is part of Sharma’s renamed Xbox division. They might be aware that there’s a Diablo mobile game, sure, and they might dabble in a bit of COD: Mobile, or perhaps even Fallout Shelter.
But really, they probably actively dislike mobile games and the casual player as a concept anyway. So at this point, early in Sharma’s tenure, Xbox’s messaging must be clean and clear and designed to please its most loyal players. Getting into a muddle by mentioning mobile or a more casual type of player is not a risk worth taking.
And yet if Sharma’s job at Xbox really is reaching and retaining more and more players, a big play for the mobile and casual market must surely come at some point. And that’ll happen only after it thinks it has repaired relations with its core fanbase.
But once you do start talking about mobile and casual players, you risk annoying that core all over again. And when you explain publicly that the majority of your daily active players come through King and various other mobile releases, that’ll worry them some more.
It’s an impossible thing to line up, isn’t it? We’ve suggested a solution to this one before: you can avoid all this by making King the mobile-casual game brand within Microsoft and let Xbox get on with pleasing core PC and console players. They’re completely different markets anyway.
Alternatively: sell King off entirely to someone like Scopely. But jettisoning a chunk of Xbox that doesn’t fit into the ‘restore the core’ vision also means the all-important daily active players count will drop dramatically, right?
Or: is this daily active players metric actually only about Game Pass players anyway?
Xbox and Sharma are faced with several knotty problems that don’t have easy solutions, so adding a new metric into the mix, like daily active players, might seem like a handy new way to focus the business.
Pick it all apart, though, and it’s clear that reviving an old name, tweaking the logo and guffing out another load of hot air can’t hide the fact Xbox is as messy and incoherent as ever.
