Given these rumors, they announced an entire event a week in advance where they would talk about the future of the company. This further fueled rumors and created concern. All so that in the end there was no significant difference in their business model and things that we already knew were confirmed.
Why do we think the Xbox podcast was poorly executed?
The Xbox event could be a tweet, statement or email
Many eyes were on Xbox and its supposed new business plan for February 15. On the one hand, there was concern that it would become a third party, which would affect competition in the industry. On the other, we were hoping for big, exciting announcements in the future.
What we got was that in the first 5 minutes of the podcast some rumors were revealed to be true. Four exclusive games from the company will be released on other platforms. Although their names were not revealed, the same insiders who said this would happen have already revealed who they are: HiFi Rush, Pentiment, Grounded and Sea of Thieves.
Outside of this and the information that they are already working on a very powerful console for the next generation, there was no news. Instead of taking advantage of the moment to further excite the brand's fans, they just repeated what they have said for years.
Even Phil Spencer himself mentioned this. They simply follow their motto of 'Xbox play anywhere', where they want players to have more options to enjoy their games. Whether on tablets, cell phones, smart TVs or on your console.
Until the announcement of Diablo IV in Game Pass it was not so new, since it was a fact that Activision-Blizzard games would arrive sooner or later. So there was really no real valid reason to do this podcast. All they communicated could have been a tweet from Phil Spencer.
This is not how you handle a crisis.
Those who followed this entire Xbox debate on social networks know that it was not a minor scandal. Thousands of users shared the rumors and took them as reality. Even some influencers who strongly defend the brand began to worry about the silence of their managers. Not to mention those who sold their console as a result of the rumors.
This whole big circus could easily be stopped with a simple tweet from the official accounts. A simple announcement of 'we are planning to release four exclusives on other platforms. Pay attention'. After all the podcast was basically this.
Announcing a podcast with ambiguous phrases did nothing to calm the waters. On the contrary, it caused more rumors and conjectures to arise the whole week we were waiting. Especially since they didn't announce it like anything either.
Three of the most important Xbox personalities were on this podcast. The head of the division, Phil Spencer; President Sarah Bond and Matt Booty, Head of Xbox Game Studios. Having these characters and saying that you talk about the future of the company sends the message that it will be something extremely important.
The reality is that it was not, it was basically talking about the four exclusives and saying that their model will remain. With a focus on growing Game Pass and releasing titles on day one. But this has already been known for several years. Why make a podcast to repeat it?
Xbox did not completely end the rumors
It was already clear that, prior to the podcast, Xbox only increased the rumors thanks to the big announcement they made. But also after this came an interview with Phil Spencer that once again raised doubts. Well, the executive assured that they are not closed to Starfield also becoming multiplatform.
Although they questioned him only about this Bethesda game, he assured that there are possibilities for other franchises. In addition to saying that it doesn't make sense to say that some game will never reach other platforms, which already suggests that more will arrive in the future.
With this, the rumors will only skyrocket again, as the bets and predictions will begin again on which will be the next exclusive to arrive on PS5 or Switch. Then this podcast becomes much more insignificant. In it he said only four and in a subsequent interview he says that there are possibilities for more.
Many Xbox fans are happy with the presentation, but it's more because of the fact that 'nothing bad' happened. But if we look at it objectively, we notice that the communication was quite vague. They announce that four games leave exclusivity, but they do not say which ones. They announce a very powerful new console but they don't say when it will arrive or why they consider it that way. All to finally promise an event in June. If they only wanted to promote that, they would have warned with a tweet as well.
In the end it is not about criticizing the company's supposed new model, but about the way of communicating it. Although who knows, maybe it was some kind of trick to test the waters and gauge how the public would react. We just hope that their next podcasts and announcements have a little more substance and more reason for being.
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