Microsoft is now rolling out its Xbox mode to all Windows 11 PCs. The new Xbox mode adds a full-screen interface to the Xbox PC app, much like Steam’s Big Picture Mode, and originally debuted as the Xbox Full Screen Experience (FSE) with Asus’ Xbox Ally devices.

“Some players in select markets will be able to download the Xbox mode experience today, with availability expanding to more players in those markets over the next several weeks,” says the Xbox team. You’ll be able to get the Xbox mode by installing the latest Windows update for Windows 11.

Xbox mode aims to try and bridge the gap between Xbox consoles and Windows, but its original debut felt like a beta on the Xbox Ally devices. “Since first introducing Xbox mode, formerly known as ‘full screen experience,’ on Windows handhelds, we’ve been listening closely to player feedback and continuing to evolve the experience across devices,” says the Xbox team. “Those learnings directly shaped Xbox mode on Windows 11 PCs.”

Microsoft is also rolling out improvements to the Xbox Ally X handheld today, including a preview of its Auto SR upscaling technology. Xbox console owners are also getting a new dashboard update today, with the ability to disable Quick Resume on individual games and a feature to add custom colors to the dashboard.

Microsoft is starting to test its Automatic Super Resolution (Auto SR) feature with the Xbox Ally X. Auto SR first debuted on some Copilot Plus PCs nearly two years ago, improving visual quality and frame rates in select games. Now, Microsoft is testing it for docked play on the Xbox Ally X, allowing the 7-inch handheld to improve resolution and graphical settings for bigger TV screens.

“Docked play means larger screens and higher resolutions, where drops in image quality are more noticeable or where some games struggle to maintain smooth FPS,” says Microsoft in a detailed blog post on Auto SR. “That’s exactly the problem Auto SR was designed to solve, so we’re starting the preview with docked mode where we expect players will see the most value.”

Auto SR works much like Nvidia’s DLSS, rendering a game at lower resolution to boost frame rates and then upscaling those frames to improve image quality. DLSS has become surprisingly popular in recent years, with more than 80 percent of RTX GPU owners activating DLSS upscaling. “It is often a core part of how many modern games render, and players expect it,” says Microsoft.

Not every game ships with DLSS, AMD’s FSR, or Intel’s XeSS, but Microsoft’s Auto SR is built into Windows and can apply super resolution to existing games without game-integrated options. It’s not clear how well this will work across a variety of different games. Originally Auto SR was something Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon laptops would do automatically for 12 whitelisted games, and now it’s on an AMD handheld and Microsoft says you can toggle it on for DirectX 10 or later games with varying results.

Microsoft is demonstrating how Auto SR can boost frame rates and texture details in Forza Horizon 5. The company is specifically leveraging the NPU chip on the Xbox Ally X to avoid impacting frame rates on the GPU side.

Auto SR will be integrated into the Game Bar on the Xbox Ally X, allowing players to toggle it on or off for games. Microsoft says it will be most useful for games running below 60fps, to help titles run more smoothly. If you want to start testing Auto SR on an Xbox Ally X, all you have to do is join the Xbox Insider program.

Alongside Auto SR, Microsoft and Asus are also improving the docking experience of the Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X devices. Gameplay will now move to the TV and the handheld display will automatically turn off when you connect to a TV, and the ROG Bulwark will now unlock Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) for smoother gameplay on compatible TVs. Microsoft is also working on extending this to other “Designed for Xbox” docks in the future.

There’s also a new display widget in the Game Bar to control resolution, refresh rates, and project modes without having to leave a game. Microsoft has also disabled the built-in controls on a docked Xbox Ally if you’ve paired an Xbox controller. If you want to navigate around with a cursor, a new Gamepad Cursor option makes it easy to control apps that aren’t designed for a controller. Microsoft and Asus are also adding “enhanced vibration” haptic feedback to the Xbox Ally devices to better match “what you expect across Xbox devices.”

Finally, Microsoft is also improving the experience of a single library of games from a variety of different PC storefronts on the Xbox Ally devices. “Rolling out this month, you can now add, remove, edit, and launch any installed game or app directly from the Xbox experience — including games from other PC gaming storefronts and launchers,“ says Roanne Sones, CVP of gaming devices and ecosystem at Xbox.

Microsoft’s relationship with OpenAI has always been complicated, so I expected the close partnership-turned-situationship to end in tears. After all, executive disagreements, rearranged contracts, and frustrations over AI infrastructure have all regularly been part of the partnership, creating plenty of tension along the way. But against all odds, Microsoft and OpenAI divorced this week in a way that looks strangely amicable.

Microsoft announced the updates to its long-standing OpenAI deal on Monday, with the most important change allowing OpenAI to make its products and services available across all cloud providers. A day later, OpenAI announced it was bringing its latest AI models, Codex, and other tools to AWS — Microsoft’s biggest cloud rival.

It’s a move that seemed likely ever since Amazon announced its $50 billion deal with OpenAI earlier this year, which was originally framed as a deal to make AWS a third-party provider of OpenAI Frontier, together with some collaborative work on custom models for Alexa. Microsoft wasn’t happy about OpenAI cutting a deal with its main rival, and it was weighing legal action ahead of this renegotiation.

Amazon and OpenAI clearly wanted a closer partnership, especially as Amazon is playing catch-up in the AI market and trying to push agents to businesses through its Bedrock service. OpenAI told its employees earlier this month that its deal with Microsoft “has also limited our ability to meet enterprises where they are — for many that’s Bedrock.” Ouch.

As much as Microsoft will hate seeing OpenAI models being available to Amazon, it now stands to benefit from OpenAI cozying up to its rival. Sources tell me that as part of the amended agreement, Microsoft will continue to receive 20 percent of the revenue OpenAI earns for ChatGPT and the AI startup’s API platform. This also includes a cut of any revenue OpenAI earns from putting its products and services on rival cloud platforms like AWS. There’s a revenue cap, but this seems mutually beneficial for both Microsoft and OpenAI even if the Amazon deal originally angered Microsoft.

Microsoft will remain “OpenAI’s primary cloud partner” and ship OpenAI’s latest products first on Azure, but the lack of exclusivity now means OpenAI’s new models can ship minutes later to rival cloud platforms. I wouldn’t be surprised to see OpenAI’s models also appear on Google’s Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform service in the future.

That gives Microsoft less of an advantage over its rivals, particularly for its Azure OpenAI service and its Foundry efforts. Microsoft’s non-exclusive license for OpenAI models and products will now last through 2032, a two-year extension over the previous 2030 cutoff date. 

The revenue sharing is also one way now, so Microsoft no longer has to pay 20 percent of its Azure OpenAI revenue back to OpenAI. This new deal also means Microsoft won’t be paying a revenue share to OpenAI if its search and news advertising revenue grows by 15 percent year over year. Microsoft still owns around 27 percent of OpenAI’s for-profit arm, too, making it a major shareholder in OpenAI’s future growth. 

This amicable split but not-a-split has only been made possible because Microsoft’s access to OpenAI models is no longer tied to a clause about artificial general intelligence (AGI), something that has long dictated OpenAI and Microsoft’s partnership. The removal of the AGI clause means Microsoft will no longer lose access to OpenAI’s most advanced future models once AGI is theoretically reached. And on the flip side, OpenAI is no longer incentivized to declare AGI to get out of the deal.

The pair had been arguing about the AGI clause for well over a year, and things got particularly heated when OpenAI was considering a $3 billion deal to buy AI coding tool Windsurf last year. OpenAI wanted Windsurf to be exempt from the deal with Microsoft, and even reportedly considered accusing Microsoft of anticompetitive behavior. OpenAI eventually backed down on its Windsurf acquisition plans, but sources at Microsoft tell me it led to months of tense negotiations over OpenAI’s controversial for-profit restructuring last year.

I understand Microsoft first became wary of OpenAI as a partner when Sam Altman was ousted as CEO in 2023 by the nonprofit’s board of directors. This wariness led to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recruiting DeepMind cofounder Mustafa Suleyman to lead its Microsoft AI business. Altman was reportedly “angered” that Suleyman had joined Microsoft, especially as Suleyman’s team started dealing directly with OpenAI engineers. 

The tension between Suleyman’s teams and OpenAI came to a boiling point when Microsoft’s AI chief yelled at former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati during a meeting in 2024, reportedly demanding access to OpenAI code. While Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, CTO Kevin Scott, and Nadella had all delicately brought the OpenAI deal to life, Suleyman was hired to shake things up and create Microsoft’s own AI models so that in the future it’s less reliant on OpenAI.

Parts of these deal changes also seem designed to distance Microsoft from the chaos of OpenAI and Sam Altman. OpenAI is increasingly juggling public controversies, strategy shifts, and a slew of executive reshufflings. It certainly feels like the vibes are off, and the contract update comes in the same week that Elon Musk and Altman are in court battling over the future of the AI company. Microsoft has already started getting dragged into this drama.

Away from the courtroom antics of Musk and Altman, Microsoft is still quietly trying to build models good enough to replace OpenAI’s. It’s had some impressive results with models like MAI-Transcribe-1, a speech-to-text model that works across 25 different languages. But most of Microsoft’s own AI models have been very task specific or smaller in size compared to OpenAI’s large language models.

To make up for this gap, Microsoft is increasingly turning its attention to options from Anthropic that are more powerful than OpenAI’s models for certain tasks. Sources at Microsoft tell me the company has even considered using Google’s Gemini models for certain products, just like how it rapidly started trialing Anthropic’s Claude Code.

Microsoft is willing to use the best AI model for the job, in an effort to keep businesses hooked to its enterprise software offerings and fend off competition from AI startups and even OpenAI itself. Some of the tension throughout Microsoft and OpenAI’s partnership has been related to the collision course the pair have both been on, each trying to convince the same mutual customers to purchase their AI services.

All this points toward Microsoft’s AI future as a mix of models developed internally and by OpenAI, Anthropic, and others. It leaves Microsoft and OpenAI with a partnership that’s a lot more about finances than close collaboration on the future of AI. They’ll still be closely linked, but the partnership-turned-situationship is looking a lot less complicated than before.

The pad

• Microsoft brings Xbox back, scraps Microsoft Gaming. Just days after announcing an Xbox Game Pass price cut, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma revealed to employees that Microsoft Gaming is now returning to just Xbox. Microsoft originally switched branding to Microsoft Gaming at the same time it announced its plan to acquire Activision Blizzard in 2022. Phil Spencer was promoted to Microsoft Gaming CEO at the time, but Sharma is now reverting those changes. “Xbox needs to be our identity,” said Sharma to Xbox employees.
• The “We Are Xbox” rallying of the troops. Alongside Microsoft Gaming returning to just Xbox, Sharma and Xbox chief content officer Matt Booty sent a joint memo to Xbox employees laying out their vision for the future of Xbox. “We Are Xbox” was the message, rallying Xbox employees to focus on the frustrations of players. Xbox will now be judged on daily active players and the priorities of hardware, content, experience, and services. Sharma has only been in the job for a couple of months, but she’s certainly starting to make her mark. There are still plenty of big questions over how her strategy will be different from the previous Xbox leadership, particularly when it comes to a renewed console focus and questions around game exclusivity.
• Xbox has a new logo. As part of Sharma’s all-hands, Microsoft started showing off a new Xbox logo on its campus this week. The logo has more of a glassy, transparent look, and I understand Microsoft has also been using this new design for some of its internal Project Helix materials. Microsoft has also plastered the “return of Xbox” slogan on the walls of its Xbox offices this week, along with “great games” and “future of play.”
• GitHub had another major outage. In last week’s Notepad issue I reported on employee concerns about GitHub reliability, and then hours later GitHub had a major outage. It was a particularly bad one, thanks to a bug that randomly reverted previously merged commits (code snapshots). Then on Monday GitHub had a search-related outage. GitHub CTO Vladimir Fedorov admitted that “both of those incidents are not acceptable,” in a blog post promising more transparency for incidents. It seems like GitHub is struggling to scale with the increased demand of AI development workflows, and it’s stressing all of its systems. I suspect the migration to Azure is also adding some complexity in the short-term, too.
• Microsoft will let you pause Windows Updates indefinitely, 35 days at a time. Windows 11 users won’t be forced to apply a Windows update in the middle of a game or during busy work. Microsoft is rolling out a lot of changes to Windows Update, including the ability to delay updates indefinitely at up to 35 days at a time. That means you’ll soon be able to pause updates for a 35-day window and keep re-pausing them at the end of that 35-day window. I think it makes sense that Microsoft won’t let people turn off Windows Update altogether, but there’s a lot more flexibility on the way to make it less annoying.
• Leak reveals new Xbox Game Pass ‘Starter Edition’ that’s part of Discord Nitro. Microsoft started teasing a mysterious Discord and Xbox Game Pass partnership last week, and a new leak has uncovered details on an Xbox Game Pass “Starter Edition” that will be bundled with Discord Nitro. The Starter Edition reportedly includes “access to over 50 games from the Game Pass library,” as well as 10 hours a month of Xbox Cloud Gaming streaming and the ability to earn Xbox Rewards points while playing games. Titles like Stardew Valley, Grounded, and Fallout 4 will be included, and we’re now waiting on Microsoft to make this new tier official.
• Microsoft Office can now be controlled with Logitech’s MX Creative Console. Logitech now has a suite of productivity plug-ins for its MX line of accessories, including its Stream Deck alternative. Shortcuts and actions for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint will all be available on the buttons of the MX Creative Console, making it easier to pin favorite Office tasks instead of having to find them in the Ribbon.
• Microsoft is giving its Xbox employees an Xbox email address. After scrapping Microsoft Gaming and promising Xbox employees that “We are Xbox,” Microsoft is now giving its Xbox employees an Xbox email address. The new Xbox email address will replace an existing @microsoft.com address as the default way to send new emails, and employees will be able to opt out and keep their Microsoft email address as the default send-from address instead. It’s a small and subtle change that’s being made as part of “strengthening the Xbox identity inside and outside of Microsoft,” according to an internal Xbox memo seen by The Verge. Activision and Bethesda employees also use their own domain for emails, but this change allows the broader Xbox team to have a similar appearance in emails to partners and developers.
• GitHub rushed to fix a critical vulnerability in less than six hours. While there are ongoing concerns about GitHub reliability, engineers at Microsoft rushed to fix a critical vulnerability last month in less than six hours. Wiz Research used AI models to uncover a vulnerability in GitHub’s internal git infrastructure that could have allowed attackers to access millions of public and private code repositories. GitHub’s engineering team developed a fix and deployed it just over an hour after identifying the root cause, protecting both GitHub.com and GitHub Enterprise Server.
• Microsoft reports sinking Xbox revenue as its cloud business climbs. Microsoft reported its Q3 2026 fiscal earnings this week, and its Xbox gaming division took a hit this time around. Xbox hardware revenue was down 33 percent, Xbox content and services revenue was down 5 percent, and overall gaming revenue was down 7 percent. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella reflected on the recent Xbox leadership changes and renewed focus on Windows in an earnings call, saying the company is making an effort to “win back fans across Windows, Xbox, Bing, and Edge.” Sharma also took to X to admit that “player and revenue growth has not yet met our ambition,” and that “We know we have work to do to earn every player today and into the future.” Outside of consumer, Microsoft’s cloud business continues to flourish, with the company reporting $54.5 billion in revenue, marking a 29 percent year-over-year increase. Microsoft 365 Copilot saw growth as well, with paid seats jumping from 15 million in the previous quarter to 20 million.
• GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing. All GitHub Copilot plans are moving to usage-based billing in June. That means every Copilot plan will include a monthly allotment of GitHub AI Credits, with the option to purchase more. “Usage will be calculated based on token consumption, including input, output, and cached tokens, using the listed API rates for each model,” says Mario Rodriguez, chief product officer at GitHub. It’s a controversial change, but it’s part of the ongoing AI money squeeze where we’re starting to see companies introduce ads, rate limits, or feature restrictions in a bid to get more people paying for AI services.
• Outlook gets a Copilot upgrade. Microsoft is upgrading its Copilot integration in Outlook to make it more agentic, so Copilot can triage emails, reschedule meetings, and more. The most interesting change is allowing Copilot to fully manage your calendar and resolve conflicts or prioritize meetings. This is something that’s typically a full-time job for many executive assistants, and Copilot will still need to be prompted to manage this side of a calendar properly.

I’m always keen to hear from readers, so please drop a comment here, or you can reach me at notepad@theverge.com if you want to discuss anything else. If you’ve heard about any of Microsoft’s secret projects, you can reach me via email at notepad@theverge.com or speak to me confidentially on the Signal messaging app, where I’m tomwarren.01. I’m also tomwarren on Telegram, if you’d prefer to chat there.

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GitHub employees fixed a critical remote code execution vulnerability in less than six hours last month. Wiz Research used AI models to uncover a vulnerability in GitHub’s internal git infrastructure that could have allowed attackers to access millions of public and private code repositories.

“Our security team immediately began validating the bug bounty report. Within 40 minutes, we had reproduced the vulnerability internally and confirmed the severity,” explains Alexis Wales, GitHub chief information security officer. “This was a critical issue that required immediate action.”

GitHub’s engineering team developed a fix and deployed it just over an hour after identifying the root cause, protecting both GitHub.com and GitHub Enterprise Server. “In less than two hours we had validated the finding, deployed a fix to github.com, and begun a forensic investigation that concluded there was no exploitation,” says Wales. This meant the issue was fixed within six hours of the report from Wiz.

The vulnerability itself was discovered “using AI,” according to Wiz. It’s not clear exactly what AI model helped find the issue, though. “Notably, this is one of the first critical vulnerabilities discovered in closed-source binaries using AI, highlighting a shift in how these flaws are identified,” says Sagi Tzadik, a security researcher at Wiz.

While GitHub’s rapid response meant a fix was deployed in just hours, Wiz warns that the rare vulnerability was “remarkably easy to exploit,” despite how complex GitHub’s underlying system is. “A finding of this caliber and severity is rare, earning one of the highest rewards available in our Bug Bounty program, and serves as a reminder that the most impactful security research comes from skilled researchers who know how to ask the right questions,” says Wales.

The discovery of a major vulnerability in GitHub comes just days after GitHub had a major outage that randomly reverted previously merged commits (code snapshots) for some users. GitHub also had other outages last week, in what’s increasingly becoming a trend for the service. I reported last week on employee concerns about GitHub reliability, highlighting one GitHub employee who says “the company is collapsing, both in outages that are reallllly bad and have torched the company reputation… and in an exodus of leadership.”

Microsoft started teasing a mysterious Discord and Xbox Game Pass partnership yesterday, and a new leak appears to have detailed exactly what’s coming. Discord Previews has uncovered a new Xbox Game Pass “Starter Edition” that is bundled with Discord Nitro.

The Starter Edition reportedly includes “access to over 50 games from the Game Pass library,” as well as 10 hours a month of Xbox Cloud Gaming streaming and the ability to earn Xbox Rewards points while playing games. It’s not clear which games will be part of the more than 50 titles available, but the leaked images suggest that Stardew Valley, Grounded, and Fallout 4 will be included.

The Starter Edition doesn’t appear to be limited to Microsoft’s own first-party Xbox games, either. Better xCloud developer redphx also uncovered the Xbox Game Pass (Starter Edition) earlier today, and noted that a lot of third-party games will be available through this new Game Pass tier.

I reported in February that Microsoft is looking at ways to bundle third-party services with Game Pass subscriptions. This new Starter Edition appears to be a way for other services to bundle Game Pass. Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters told The Information last month that he and Xbox CEO Asha Sharma had “kicked around ideas” for partnering on subscription bundles, so perhaps we’ll see Netflix offer a similar Game Pass bundle soon.

Microsoft’s new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has laid out a new strategy for what she describes as a “return of Xbox.” In a joint memo with Xbox chief content officer Matt Booty, Sharma and Booty lay out their vision for the future of Xbox that will be judged on daily active players and the priorities of hardware, content, experience, and services.

“Players are frustrated,” admits Sharma and Booty. “New feature drops on console have been less frequent. Our presence on PC isn’t strong enough. Pricing is getting harder for people to keep up with. And core experiences like search, discovery, social, and personalization still feel too fragmented. Developers and publishers are asking for more, too: better tools, better insights, and a platform that helps them grow faster.”

The answer isn’t the same model that got Xbox to where it is today, according to Sharma and Booty. Instead, Microsoft wants to “build a global platform that connects players and creators everywhere” with console as the foundation. “Xbox will be built to be affordable, personal, and open,” say Booty and Sharma. “We will offer flexible pricing so it’s easy to get started and keep playing. The experience will adapt to you, letting you customize how you play, helping you find what you’ll love, and connecting you with the right people.”

Microsoft is also “reevaluating” its approach to Xbox exclusive games or release windows. “We will reevaluate our approach to exclusivity, windowing, and AI, and share more as we learn and decide,” says Sharma and Booty. The memo also touches on being “honest about where we are,” and the team having a “level of self-critique that should feel uncomfortable.”

You can read the full memo, below:

Dear team,

Xbox has always been different.

We started with a simple idea. Games should bring people together through shared experiences. That led to the first Xbox in 2001, Xbox Live in 2002, and new ways to connect, from friends lists and achievements to parties and play across devices. Today, Xbox reaches over 500 million players around the world, with some of the most important franchises in entertainment.

From the beginning, Xbox was built by people willing to try things that others wouldn’t. We placed a consumer bet inside an enterprise company because we believed gaming would define the living room, and we were at risk of missing it. 

That spirit has carried us through the last 25 years, and it is required to carry us forward. 

We have work to do

Players are frustrated. 

New feature drops on console have been less frequent. Our presence on PC isn’t strong enough. Pricing is getting harder for people to keep up with. And core experiences like search, discovery, social, and personalization still feel too fragmented. Developers and publishers are asking for more, too: better tools, better insights, and a platform that helps them grow faster.

At the same time, a new generation of players is coming online with different expectations. Their time is split across games, media, and everything else competing for attention. They expect more content in familiar places, want to shape the worlds they play in, and want to create and socialize together, not just play together.

These changes are happening as the industry reshapes around us. 

Console remains large and stable. Windows now represents more players and more hours and is increasingly where competition is most intense. Players have access to more games than ever, even as the cost and time to build blockbuster titles continues to rise, putting pressure on what gets made and how risk is taken. Some of the biggest recent hits are coming from small teams or even single creators, and places like Roblox are producing experiences that rival major franchises in scale. More players are also choosing subscriptions and services as their primary way to play, with expectations set around instant access, ongoing value, and libraries that evolve continuously.

The industry is becoming global and competitive. More than half of the market’s revenue, players, and growth are happening outside of our core markets. But the rest of the world is not just a large market. Developers there are increasingly competing with the most established Western studios, combining scale, speed, and a willingness to reinvent genres many once considered mature.

The model that got us here won’t be the one that takes us forward.

Xbox will be where the world plays

What does Xbox become in this next era? 

Xbox will be where the world plays and creates. We will build a global platform that connects players and creators everywhere. Console is at the foundation, delivering a premium experience, and cloud brings that experience to any device. You can play where you want, and your games, progress, friends, and identity stay with you across console, PC, mobile, and cloud.

Xbox will be built to be affordable, personal, and open. We will offer flexible pricing so it’s easy to get started and keep playing. The experience will adapt to you, letting you customize how you play, helping you find what you’ll love, and connecting you with the right people. And we will be open to all creators, from individuals to the largest studios, giving anyone the tools to reach a global audience and keep their games growing over time.

Our new north star will be daily active players. 

We will execute this through four priorities: hardware, content, experience, and services.

Hardware

Stabilize Gen9 as a healthy and high-quality base 

Deliver Project Helix to lead in performance and play your console and PC games

Lead in comfortable, personal, high-performance accessories

Build a strong ecosystem that expands choice and reach

Content 

Grow and extend an enduring portfolio of franchises players love 
Evolve our 3P partnerships and strengthen our 5-year slate

Expand into China, emerging markets, and mobile-first audiences 

Maintain and grow in live games and long-term stewardship 
Elevate creator-centric platforms like Minecraft, Elder Scrolls, and Sea of Thieves

Experience

Fix the fundamentals for players and partners 

Make Xbox the best place for developers and creators to build and grow 
Overhaul discovery, customization, social and personalization to connect the community 

Services

Fortify Game Pass with clear differentiation and sustainable economics 
Return the business to durable growth with strong cost discipline 

Make cloud play feel native, fast, and reliable across TVs and low-cost devices

Use M&A deliberately to accelerate growth where organic paths are too slow

Along the way, we will reevaluate our approach to exclusivity, windowing, and AI, and share more as we learn and decide.

We are Xbox

To achieve our master plan, the way we work must transform. 

Our best work happens when the full stack moves together. “Microsoft Gaming” describes our structure but it does not describe our ambition.  So, we are going back to where we started and changing our team’s name. 

We are Xbox.

We are a high agency culture where wild and wonderful ideas thrive.  Our job is not to smooth over our differences, but to connect everyone into something greater than any one studio or product.

We have to be honest about where we are. We’re a challenger, and meeting this moment will require pace, energy, and a level of self-critique that should feel uncomfortable. At our best we: 

1. Earn every player 
2. Protect our art 
3. Stay rebellious 
4. Progress over perfection 
5. Signal over ceremony
6. Core before more

7. Outwork the problem 
8. Speed is learning
9. Makers over managers
10. Clarity is kindness

Over the last five years, Xbox and the industry have been through an unimaginable amount of change, and this team has continued to deliver through it for our community. Thank you for staying focused on what matters. 62 days in, we’re proud of how we’ve honored our commitments of great games, return of Xbox, and future of play.  We’re here to do the most creative and courageous work of our lives, and that’s what we’ll do together.

With gratitude,

Matt & Asha