An internal memo written by Microsoft’s Xbox President Sarah Bond has leaked online, providing a window into the company’s plans for its gaming business. The letter includes a recap of recent achievements to buoy the team’s spirits and some information on what’s next for Xbox hardware and games. While the gaming division will continue pushing for new, more powerful Xbox hardware, the future is also plugged into the past. Bond confirms Microsoft has a new game preservation team dedicated to ensuring backward compatibility.
This is a critical time for Microsoft’s gaming segment. It’s just coming off a multi-year quest to acquire Activision Blizzard, which brought to light the company’s struggles to keep up with Sony and Nintendo. Microsoft did eventually seal the deal, and part of the memo discusses how leadership intends to bring Activision Blizzard into the Xbox hierarchy. Some games like Diablo IV have already been added to Microsoft Game Pass, and Battle.net will soon be integrated with Microsoft services.
Despite getting its hands on the prized Call of Duty franchise as part of the Activision deal, Microsoft recently pulled back on exclusives. Several Microsoft titles, including Sea of Thieves and Grounded, are coming to Nintendo Switch and Sony PlayStation 5. Microsoft isn’t giving up on hardware, though. In the memo, Bond says the next Xbox will be “focused on delivering the biggest technological leap ever in a generation.” That could be just what Microsoft needs—some games of this generation have been delayed on or even bypassed the Xbox because it was less powerful than Sony’s console.
Perhaps the biggest news from the memo is the creation of a game preservation group in the Xbox team. This has become an increasingly serious issue for gamers and game designers as the industry continues shifting toward online distribution and live services. There’s no guarantee that the games you purchase for one system will work on the next one. Nintendo is famous for half-hearted support for old games, often selling them in digital storefronts, which themselves are then discontinued.
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Credit: Microsoft
“We have formed a new team dedicated to game preservation, important to all of us at Xbox and the industry itself,” Bond said in the message. Bond says Microsoft has a strong legacy of backward compatibility, and the new team will ensure it stays that way. She did not. However, detail any concrete steps the team will take to preserve access to games.
Xbox Game Pass could be a core part of preservation moving forward. This subscription includes both downloadable and cloud games, the latter of which can be streamed to almost any device with an internet connection. Keeping games accessible is a long-term goal, though. Microsoft is surely laying the groundwork for its next console. We are expecting to learn more about the next-generation game consoles from Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft later this year, but it will probably be late 2025 at the earliest before you’ll be able to buy the super-powerful new Xbox.