Xbox CEO Asha Sharma discusses her desire to shape the future of the Xbox brand around affordability for all gamers.
Ever since the retirements of Phil Spencer and Sarah Bond, Xbox has been undergoing a major restructuring under Asha Sharma’s leadership. Most recently, they addressed the recent price increases for the Xbox Game Pass subscription service.
Sharma decided to lower the Ultimate tier of the service from $29.99 to $22.99. Now, she’s expanding on her vision of affordability for all Xbox players.
Asha Sharma Wants Xbox Built Around Affordable Gaming
During an interview with Stephen Totilo of Game File, Asha Sharma admitted that Xbox’s pricing hasn’t always been shaped by consumer affordability. She said that’s the main focus for the immediate future. The team took that stuff with Game Pass, and they will continue to look at other areas of business where they can lower prices.
“I think, historically, our pricing hasn’t been as flexible,” she said. “And I think that’s the big thing we want to go work on. You saw that with Game Pass. It had become too expensive. So we took a step to address that.”
Furthermore, she says their Vision with Game Pass was looked at as a two-step process. Affordability was the first step; ensuring the service’s future value is the next main focus.
“We’ve been thinking about Game Pass in two steps,” she said. “One is just: let’s make sure it’s affordable, which we addressed. The second is: what does value look like eight years later, after the advent of Game Pass and the world changing around us, and the next generation coming online? And so we’re exploring a number of different things.”
In the future, Xbox plans to focus on innovation while offering more affordable hardware and services. However, they understand that, despite their best efforts, reality may present significant challenges to their aspirations.
“Look, there’s a reality to the market that we’re in, so there’s no promises around what the price points are or anything like that. But I want to make sure that people around the world are able to play,” she said.
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