At Summer Game Fest today, Xbox’s new chief strategy officer Matthew Ball spoke about some of the company’s big moves recently, including its strategy on exclusives and what’s next for the company in the hardware space with Project Helix. He made these comments at The Game Business Live.
“Reliable pipeline” of exclusives
On the subject of exclusives, Ball said, “Everyone in the industry understands that exclusives are important,” and Microsoft is no different. The first two console exclusives that Microsoft announced at the Xbox Games Showcase were Gears of War: E-Day this October and Clockwork Revolution in 2027.
Ball said Xbox players can expect a “reliable pipeline” of Xbox-exclusives that “validates their historical investment” in the Xbox platform and keeps them there.
Microsoft’s major live-service multiplayer games, like Call of Duty, will continue to be multiplatform releases going forward, he said. Additionally, titles that were previously announced for non-Xbox platforms will still come to those platforms because of previously agreed-upon plans, Ball said.
The messaging from Microsoft around exclusives under the leadership of Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has been muddy, and Ball said Microsoft has more work to do to communicate its strategy around exclusives to fans and partners.
Also in the interview, Ball talked about the Xbox hardware business, pushing back against the idea that it’s a dying market for Microsoft. “We have no desire to move away from the console business,” he said.
“We are making an investment in our platform, the console platform that is going to be strengthened by these exclusives,” he added.
Ball went on to acknowledge that certain Xbox exclusives will sell fewer units than they might otherwise if they were multiplatform, but that is a short-term issue, and making these changes will help Xbox’s console business grow in the future, he claimed.
A Project Helix rethink
Microsoft is making these statements about Xbox and hardware during a time when the AI craze is driving up component prices so much that people are very worried about what the new console, Project Helix, might cost when it releases. “The crisis is not yet getting better,” Ball said, admitting that he previously underestimated how bad things might get.
“The window in which we and others are gonna have to work through is getting longer, and that is going to constrain the category,” he said.
Today, demand for Xbox consoles is outstripping supply, Ball said. “We are producing them as quickly as possible. These is a severe limitation to how quickly we can do that, but it’s not a question of appetite,” he said. “That is a prilvege as a company. It is a challenge for us to figure out.”
How will this all impact Project Helix? Ball said, “We are working very hard to rethink everything that we can about Helix, which is a console we are committed to shipping.”
“We are very cognizant of the ways in which we need the change as a company to make sure it is affordable, to make sure that it’s flexible,” he added. “We are working hard to rethinking what that console model can look like, not in an exclusionary way, but in an additive way, so that as we take a look at this crisis, which may have acute effects for 2-2.5 years.”
“We are working very hard to figure out the best way to navigate it or a way that works for everyone, that does not ask too much from players, but also does detract from the other investments that we need to make as a country,” he added. “We also have tens of millions of people who we ask to spend $500 which is still an incredible sum of money. Those people that we asked to buy a console years ago, we still have an obligation to them to meet their expectations and to have them feel rewarded for which platform they chose.”
“Is it fixable?”
Also during the interview, Ball recalled his first conversations after joining Xbox and how Sharma asked him straight up about Xbox, “Is it fixable?”
Ball said he’s a “strategic optimist” and believes it’s “incredibly defeatist to think there is any scenario that you can’t do better; that you can’t improve.”
“I joined because I believed I could contribute to that,” he said. “I joined because of what she told me she wanted to achieve, I believed was right and achievable. And then I had conversations with [Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella] and others at the company to validate, where do you want to go? When do you wanna go? How are we gonna do this? Do you think we can do this? Do you want us to do that?”
“All of that bolstered my confidence from the original disposition of strategic optimism. If we can turn this company around and grow it, do better by our players, and we need to do that, and we are; we languished for several years.”
Game Pass lost “millions” of subscribers after price hike
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Also during the talk, Ball discussed how Xbox Game Pass lost “millions” of subscribers in the period of a few months after the dramatic 50% price hike was announced in October 2025. Microsoft slashed the price of Game Pass Ultimate down to $23/month (from $30/month) after Sharma became Xbox CEO, but Ball said the price is still higher than where it was this time last year ($20/month). The value of the offering has now changed, he said, referring to how new Call of Duty titles are no longer included on day one, and the changes to Game Pass this year are so far “resonating” with users, he said.
