Xbox next – In a message sent to Xbox employees globally, the company says its first 100 days together brought more platform updates than the prior year combined and renewed growth in Game Pass after months of decline. But the next 100 days are about resetting a business
When the Xbox team sits down to plan the next 100 days, the mood in the room is likely to be mixed: relief from early momentum, and a harder kind of clarity about what still isn’t working.
The company’s CEO told employees globally that, over the first 100 days, Xbox has “started to revive” the platform. Platform teams have shipped more updates in those 100 days than during the prior year combined. The company says it now has more active partners on Xbox than ever before. It credits its Game Pass team for fixing the offering. adding that after 8+ months of decline. the service has started to grow again. And through “Player Voice,” Xbox says it has a 24/7 channel meant to hear directly from players, creators, and developers.
Xbox also points to major fan-facing moments and an expanded lineup of exclusives. It cites the Xbox Games Showcase and the return of FanFest. saying together they brought together “hundreds of millions of fans globally.” On the exclusives front. it says it reintroduced “Gears of War: E-Day” in 2026 and “Clockwork Revolution” in 2027. It adds that players can continue to expect signature exclusives every year. It also references Playground Games and says established franchises can reach new highs.
But the same message that describes progress also insists the reset has to be honest about the problems. “We have made mistakes. and will continue to make them. ” the CEO wrote. while stressing that what matters is listening. learning. and adjusting the course where needed. The next 100 days, the CEO said, require both optimism and realism.
The first reality Xbox listed is reach—and the shifting attention economy that comes with it. The company says over 1 billion players choose to play Xbox and Xbox games each year. totaling 72 billion hours across Console. PC. Mobile. and Streaming (excluding much of China and a few other properties). It also says its franchises are among the largest and most beloved globally and are “now breaking records in TV and film.” Even so. it warns that competition isn’t just other consoles or subscription services. The competition. it says. is attention. in a world with more great games. TV series. franchises. creators. content formats. apps. and more than ever before.
Then comes a financial reality that Xbox frames as unsustainable. The company says it will end the fiscal year at about a 3% accountability margin, down year-over-year. Excluding Activision Blizzard King. it says that over the past five years it spent over $20 billion on ongoing investments in content. platform. and hardware subsidy. yet annual revenue declined nearly half a billion during that time. Going forward, Xbox says this “cannot continue.”.
The sharpest pressure point, though, is hardware—specifically the company’s ability to make enough consoles. Xbox says it is in a hardware component crisis. When its CEO joined as CEO in February. it says the price it paid for console storage components was over 2x as high as what it paid last fall. Those costs, it says, have since doubled again. Looking ahead to the 2027 holiday season. Xbox expects another significant increase. taking prices to over 5x the prices paid only two years earlier. Memory costs are said to have followed a broadly similar trajectory.
Xbox adds that while the entire industry is facing a components crisis. it believes it has been impacted more than many of its peers due to choices made over the last half decade. It says it is currently unable to make as many consoles as players want to buy. and that it needs a new business model and partnerships for hardware as it remains committed to Helix.
Inside the company, Xbox also points to a mismatch between studio investments and the content landscape it is operating in. It says it expanded its studio system to create a pipeline of content across subscription, streaming, and devices. But it also says that during changing strategies, it became “over extended” as content became more readily available. Xbox says it is a steward of industry-defining franchises with enormous potential and player demand. but it says it hasn’t adequately funded them to compete and win.
It ties that admission to what it says it saw at this past weekend’s Showcase: that a reliable pipeline of first- and third-party exclusives and new IP is critical to success. Xbox says it needs to reassess the balance between those elements and its investment priorities for the next 5 years.
The message then moves from what Xbox builds to how it builds it. It says its current platform infrastructure is not built for the battle ahead. According to the CEO, systems are overly complex, with hundreds of dependencies that hinder speed. Xbox says it has become too reliant on vendors to operate its systems and must become more self-reliant as an engineering culture.
Going forward, Xbox says it will evolve and rebuild its stack and look at capabilities across all of Xbox and potential M&A to help it win in hardware, PC, mobile, and streaming. It says the goal is to increase the value shipped to players while decreasing the time it takes to deliver.
The sequence of priorities reads like a single thread: early momentum is real, but the company says it’s constrained by costs, capacity, and execution speed—then asks for progress anyway, “together,” by sprinting against hardware, content, experience, and services.
Xbox also frames the reset in terms of culture and expectations. The CEO wrote that for some employees, these realities may be surprising and even frustrating. The promise is not softening them. The promise is acting on them. The message closes by returning to what Xbox says it stands for: a place where people don’t just play. but connect to create memories. With console at the center of showcase experiences. Windows as one of the largest gaming platforms in the world. and games under its roof as one of the largest publishers in the world. Xbox says the foundation is in place.
“Let’s reset for a stronger XBOX and build the #1 gaming and entertainment company,” the CEO wrote, signing the note “Asha and Matt.”
Xbox Game Pass hardware crisis Helix Player Voice Xbox Games Showcase FanFest Gears of War: E-Day Clockwork Revolution platform infrastructure Asha Matt